Samsung Electronics today opened the ninth Samsung AI Forum, running Sept. 15–16. The annual event brings together world-leading academics and industry experts to share breakthroughs in artificial intelligence 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 forum brings together leading experts to discuss how AI is reshaping society and industry, and to exchange insights in what we expect will be a meaningful dialogue.”
The forum features keynote lectures from world-renowned AI researchers, including Yoshua Bengio, Professor at the University of Montreal and a pioneer in deep learning, and Stefano Ermon, Stanford professor and Co-founder of Inception, who helped pioneer the diffusion-based language model (DLM).
Day One: AI for the Semiconductor Era
Day one, hosted by Samsung’s Device Solutions (DS) Division near its Yongin semiconductor campus, focused on “Vertical AI Strategies and Vision for the Semiconductor Industry.”
- Yoshua Bengio delivered a keynote on the risks of today’s AI models — from loss of human oversight to potential misuse — and introduced Scientist AI, a model designed to provide fact-grounded, verifiable answers and support scientific discovery. He also presented new findings on AI for materials development.
- Amit Gupta, SVP of Siemens EDA, outlined the future of AI-driven electronic design, emphasizing the role of end-to-end AI systems in accelerating workflows.
- Technical sessions featured Yong Ho Song (EVP, DS Division AI Center), Professor Seokhyung Kang (POSTECH), and Professor Il-Chul Moon (KAIST), who showcased advances in AI for chip design and semiconductor manufacturing.
“AI is already essential in chip design and software development,” said EVP Song. “As manufacturing complexity increases, AI will be key to solving the challenges ahead.”
The forum also honored the Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awardees:
- Nicolas Papernot (University of Toronto)
- Rose Yu (UC San Diego)
- Lerrel Pinto (NYU)
Each presented their latest research to the global audience.
Day Two: From Generative to Agentic AI and Boosting Productivity
Day two, hosted online by Samsung’s Device eXperience (DX) Division and streamed live on Samsung Developers’ YouTube, will explore the theme “Generative to Agentic AI.”
“Generative AI is already part of daily life and industry,” said Paul (Kyungwhoon) Cheun, CTO of Samsung DX and Head of Samsung Research. “As we enter the era of Agentic AI, Samsung will continue developing technologies that deliver clear, practical benefits to users.”
Keynotes include:
- Joseph E. Gonzalez (UC Berkeley): introducing the sleep-time compute paradigm, enabling AI agents to reason, learn, and plan during idle periods.
- Subbarao Kambhampati (Arizona State University): presenting large reasoning models (LRMs) to overcome LLM limitations in factual accuracy, planning, and interpretability.
- Stefano Ermon (Stanford, Inception): unveiling diffusion language models, which apply diffusion techniques to text for more efficient, non-sequential generation.
Samsung Research will also showcase its latest technical developments:
- Camera AI for automatic color temperature adjustment
- Knowledge distillation for efficient LLM training
- On-device AI for smartphones and TVs
- Automatic dubbing that mimics the original speaker’s voice
- Multi-agent “deep dive” systems for report generation
- Document AI to convert diverse formats into structured data
- On-device AI studio for faster generative AI development cycles
With its mix of groundbreaking research, industrial insights, and recognition of rising AI leaders, Samsung AI Forum 2025 reaffirms the company’s role at the forefront of shaping AI’s future — from semiconductors to consumer technology.
