, Columnist
A Breakthrough Law Won’t Kill Korea’s AI Revolution
The point of guardrails isn’t to slow AI deployment, it’s to make it sustainable.
Photo by Jung Yeon-je /AFP/Getty Images
Nearly a decade ago, long before ChatGPT wowed the world with its humanlike conversational abilities, Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence system stunned South Korea when it beat legendary Go player Lee Sedol during a televised tournament in Seoul.
The Go master and 18-time world champion of the centuries-old strategy game later retired, calling AI an “entity that cannot be defeated.” The spectacle was a warning, with then-president Park Geun-hye declaring Korean society was “ironically lucky” to have learned about the nascent technology’s importance “before it is too late.”