Presentations by leading global AI scholars and Samsung’s latest
research activities
Samsung Electronics today announced the opening of Samsung AI Forum 2025, taking place from Sept. 15-16. Now in its ninth year, the forum serves as a global venue where leading scholars and industry experts gather to share the latest breakthroughs in AI and explore future research directions.
“Samsung is applying AI across our operations to develop foundational technologies that make AI more intuitive and seamless,” said Young Hyun Jun, Vice Chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics, in his opening remarks. “This year’s Samsung AI Forum brings together leading experts from industry and academia to discuss how AI is transforming society and industry, and to share insights in what we expect will be a meaningful exchange of ideas.”
This year’s forum features keynote lectures from world-renowned AI scholars; including Yoshua Bengio, Professor at the University of Montreal and a pioneer in deep learning; as well as Stefano Ermon, Professor at Stanford University and Co-founder of the startup Inception, who spearheaded the development of diffusion-based language model (DLM).
Day One: Global Scholars Explore the AI Semiconductor Future
Samsung’s Device Solutions (DS) Division hosted the first day of the forum under the theme “Vertical AI Strategies and Vision for the Semiconductor Industry,” near Samsung’s semiconductor site in Yongin, Korea.
Professor Bengio delivered a keynote address outlining the far-reaching risks of today’s AI models, including their ability to bypass human control and the potential for misuse. As a safeguard, he introduced Scientist AI, a new model designed to help mitigate such concerns.
“Unlike models built to mimic or please humans, Scientist AI focuses on providing truthful answers grounded in verified facts and data,” said Professor Bengio, highlighting the model’s potential to enhance AI safety and accelerate scientific discovery. He also shared his latest research findings on AI for materials development in the keynote.
Amit Gupta, Senior Vice President of Siemens EDA, led a session titled, “The Future of AI-Driven Electronic Design.” During his presentation, he emphasized the importance of integrating AI into electronic design automation (EDA) tools and noted that end-to-end systems spanning the entire workflow will be key to unlocking AI’s full potential.
Technical sessions featuring Yong Ho Song, Executive Vice President and Head of the DS Division’s AI Center, Professor Seokhyung Kang of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) and Professor Il-Chul Moon of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) followed. Each speaker shared recent research developments in AI applications for semiconductor design and manufacturing, while also offering perspectives on how the field is evolving.
“AI is already an essential tool in chip design and software development,” said EVP Song. “As semiconductor manufacturing grows more complex, we expect AI to help address the technical challenges that arise.”
The forum also recognized three winners of the Samsung AI Researcher of the Year award: Professor Nicolas Papernot of the University of Toronto, Professor Rose Yu of the University of California San Diego and Professor Lerrel Pinto of New York University. All the award recipients were invited to present their work and share insights from their latest research.
Day Two: Focusing on the Era of Agentic AI and Boosting Productivity
Day two of the forum will be held online by Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) Division and streamed live on Samsung Developer’s YouTube channel under the theme “Generative to Agentic AI.”1
“Generative AI has already become an essential tool across daily life and industries,” said Paul (Kyungwhoon) Cheun, CTO of the DX Division at Samsung Electronics and Head of Samsung Research. “As we enter the era of Agentic AI, Samsung will continue to focus on developing AI technologies that provide users with tangible benefits.”
The second day includes keynote speeches from Joseph E. Gonzalez, Professor at UC Berkeley and a leading researcher in language models and AI agents; Subbarao Kambhampati, Professor at Arizona State University and a world authority in AI planning and decision-making; and Stefano Ermon, Professor at Stanford University and Co-founder of Inception.
Professor Gonzalez will present his research on enhancing the agentic capabilities of large language model (LLM)-based systems. In particular, he will introduce the sleep-time compute paradigm, which enables agents to use idle interaction intervals to reason, learn and plan.
Professor Kambhampati will share his research on large reasoning models (LRMs) aimed at addressing the limitations of LLMs. He will point out that while current models excel at text generation, they remain limited in factual accuracy, planning and complex reasoning — highlighting key challenges such as ensuring answer guarantees, enabling context-adaptive computation, and providing interpretations of intermediate reasoning steps.
Professor Ermon will introduce diffusion language model, which applies diffusion models — widely used for image, video, and audio generation — into the language domain. This approach aims to overcome the limitations of traditional sequential text generation methods and propose a more efficient paradigm for language models.
In the technical sessions, Samsung Research representatives will present their latest developments, including:
- Camera AI technology for automatic color temperature adjustment
- Knowledge distillation-based methods for more efficient training of LLMs and their applications
- On-device AI technologies designed to bring LLMs to consumer electronics such as smartphones and TVs
- Automatic dubbing technology that generates voiceovers in the original speaker’s voice
- Deep dive technology that uses multi-agent systems to analyze and automatically generate various reports
- Document AI technologies that automatically convert diverse document formats into structure data for LLMs and agent systems
- An on-device AI studio for developers that shortens the development cycle of generative AI models
1 Intelligent systems capable of making autonomous decisions and carrying out tasks on their own.