Foster AI as our mainstay industry
Published: 25 Feb. 2024, 20:09
Updated: 25 Feb. 2024, 22:47
Lee Kwang-hyung
The author is president of KAIST and head of the fourth industrial revolution committee of the JoongAng Ilbo’s Reset Korea Campaign.
The AI craze is sweeping the world. Artificial intelligence is increasingly applied at ordinary companies, schools and other fields. Just look at remarkably clever answers by OpenAI’s ChatGPT to users’ questions. An AI system can even create realistic images and art from a description in natural language. Considering the dazzling pace, AI will develop beyond imagination in the future.
The amazing speed of AI advancement will exponentially change the lifestyle of humanity, starting with jobs. Much of education and office work relies on AI already.
AI can identify the context of users’ remarks and recommend appropriate menu for them at a restaurant or can carry out a deep analysis of data on behalf of lawyers or accountants to reach a conclusion. From now, the way you search for data and work will revolutionarily change, not the mention the job market itself. AI will soon summarize a huge amount of data quickly on users’ behalf or enable them to receive accurate diagnosis of their illnesses 24/7 even without meeting doctors. It will certainly help you live a convenient life. AI has already entered the realm of human creativity such as writing novels or music.
AI is technology. But the dramatic pace of its development suggests its expansion into the areas of culture and defense beyond the level of technology. Students will naturally receive help from AI. But they learn just what AI taught them. If AI teaches them honorific, students will learn it just as taught by AI. If AI says the Dokdo islets are Korean territory, students will believe it. If AI says the tiny two islets, lying nearly equidistant between Korea and Japan, are Japanese territory and a subject of territorial dispute between the two countries, students will learn that way. The same applies to the Korean language. Students will learn what AI taught them. Even if the government changes the rules of hangul orthography, the general public will not be able to use it unless the new spelling system is backed by AI. AI also affects a nation’s culture and identity.
Future wars will largely depend on AI, as AI-based missiles and unmanned tanks, fighter jets, and warships will certainly take the place of soldiers on the battlefield. In conventional warfare, if our troops find the enemy, our operation headquarters chooses the type of weapons and orders our soldiers to launch a counterattack. But in future wars, there is no room for humans to intervene. Upon detecting enemies through reconnaissance drones or satellites, the AI-armed operation headquarters will devise counterstrategies to deal with them. The types of weapons are important, but AI’s capability to draw up overall operational plans will be even more important. If you don’t have your own AI technology for defense, no one would develop it for you.
Given the characteristics of the software industry, the AI industry will be dominated by a few companies after 10 years. These powerful AI companies will rule the world. When that day comes, all countries will be affected by the language, history, science, culture and ethics those AI companies will provide, as seen in the current dominance of the internet search engine market by a precious few.
Advanced economies are devoted to developing AI. Starting with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Big Tech companies such as Google and Amazon are rushing to the field in the United States. China braces for the ultimate battle, based on its huge manpower and capital, as being prepared by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Though they have not yet released products on par with ChatGPT, their potential cannot be brushed off.
The AI Index Report 2023 released by Stanford University shows China has already surpassed the United States in AI research. While China produced 39.8 percent of all AI-related academic papers from 2010 through 2021, America produced only 10.3 percent.
The data released last year by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and Elsevier, a global information analytics company, shows similar results. No. 1 in the number of AI-related academic papers between 2012 and 2021 was China. In 2021 alone, China produced 43,000 AI-related papers, doubling the United States and accounting for 32 percent of all AI papers around the globe. The quality of Chinese papers does not fall behind the United States, either. Among the top 10 percent papers in the citation index, China’s was 7,401, 70 percent more than the United States.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, Chinese institutions applied for 29,853 AI patients in 2022, up 20 percent from the previous year. During the same period, U.S. filings for AI patients decreased to 17,000, down 10 percent from 2021. In 2022 alone, China’s application for AI patents outpaced the U.S. by 75.6 percent. Though questions still remain over the quality of China’s AI technology, the numbers of academic papers and patients could point in the different direction.
China shows excellence in AI-based facial recognition technology — sophisticated enough to even recognize faces of pedestrians — partly thanks to Beijing’s loose privacy protection policy. Unfettered utilization of data puts wings on developing AI further.
The United States is putting the brakes on China with diverse measures because AI technology can affect its economy and security. It obsessively regulates the export of cutting-edge chips and AI technology to China. For instance, the U.S. government recently banned Nvidia from shipping top-caliber AI chips to China. Washington strongly restricts U.S. companies’ investments in Chinese tech companies.
What is Korea doing in the face of the global AI war? Many companies are rushing to develop AI and AI-related platforms. But national strategy is not there. The government is not so aggressive in helping companies create new services. Such a passive approach cannot create globally-competitive AI companies of our own.
The AI business is diverse, ranging from employing generative AI for general use to specializing in certain fields. For instance, you can develop AI services focusing on education, history, cars, health, travel, sports or culture. The business of providing data needed to advance AI — just like Amazon does — is possible, too.
Or you can launch a business to offer convenient services by using AI systems created by others. AI-based e-commerce platforms, consulting services tailored for each company, or AI-based healthcare services are possible, too. We already have a novel business — just like Nvidia — designed to provide AI-exclusive chips. Korea cannot excel in all areas. The country must decide which types of business to focus on.
Whatever business model Korea chooses, it can hardly compete with the United States and China head on due to the relatively small size of its market. Korea must target a niche market or unite with other countries for a joint action. As Japan, Southeast Asia, and Arabic countries are under a similar situation, it could be better for Korea to join hands with them to develop and provide new AI services.
Korea must change its recognition toward AI. Though AI was included in the government’s 12 strategic technologies, its strategic response on the state level is still poor. If Korea lags behind now, it cannot catch up later. Just think of how Korea’s mainstay carmaking, shipbuilding and chipmaking industries achieved their remarkable growth in the past. The government lent an enormous amount of money to promising companies at low interest rates. The same should be applied to the AI category.
It is time to draw up an ambitious plan to establish a 10-year national AI strategy and invest 2 trillion won ($1.5 billion) in the sector. In the first stage of the plan, the government should select two companies most compatible with its national strategy and offer each of them 100 billion won in loans annually at low rates for five years to draw their investments in AI. In the second stage after five years, the government should choose one of the two companies and lend it 200 billion won annually for the next five years. That will most likely enable Korea to have a globally-competitive AI company. That’s a lesson Korea learned 30 years ago.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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