[Insight & Opinion] Legal Reforms Needed to Prepare for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT is a conversational AI chatbot developed by the American artificial intelligence (AI) research company OpenAI. It is a service where users input text into a chat window and engage in conversation accordingly. Unlike previous AI, it stands out for its ability to perform a wide range of tasks, including answering questions, writing expert-level papers, translation, songwriting and composing, and coding work.

Due to its capabilities far beyond expectations, ChatGPT has shaken the world, surpassing 100 million users within two months of its release on November 30 last year. Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, described ChatGPT as "the most important and innovative technology since the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI) in the 1980s," and said, "All industries will shift to AI-centered models, and AI will change people's work, education, travel, health, and communication." It is no exaggeration to say that the AI era, which seemed like something out of a science fiction movie, has now begun.

While there is great expectation that AI development will reduce working hours, significantly increase productivity, and improve our quality of life, there are also considerable concerns that human privacy and autonomy will be lost. From a legal perspective, numerous legal issues are expected to arise that will be difficult to resolve with existing legal interpretations.

The case of ‘Iruda,’ a Korean chatbot launched in 2020 using AI, comes to mind. The Iruda service sparked social controversy due to sexually harassing remarks, hate speech against Black people and disabled individuals, and personal information issues. It was ultimately suspended three weeks after its launch. The Personal Information Protection Commission under the Prime Minister’s Office imposed fines and penalties on the developer of Iruda for violating users’ personal information self-determination rights in the KakaoTalk chat service.

The ‘fully autonomous vehicle,’ expected to be commercialized around 2030, refers to level 4 autonomy, where the driver only inputs the destination, and the vehicle controls all functions and drives itself without the driver’s intervention in driving operations. In the event of an accident during fully autonomous driving, difficult legal issues are anticipated regarding who?owner, manufacturer, or others?will bear legal responsibility. Although the ‘Act on Promotion and Support of Commercialization of Autonomous Vehicles’ was enacted and implemented in January 2021, it focuses on operation in pilot zones and does not address these issues.

If a ‘strong AI robot’ capable of independent perception, judgment, and action from humans emerges, a more fundamental legal question arises: who is responsible for crimes committed by such a robot? Our criminal law and criminal procedure law assume that criminal acts subject to punishment are only ‘human acts,’ making it difficult to punish acts by strong AI.

Thanks to ChatGPT, the era of artificial intelligence, which once felt like a distant future, has become an immediate reality. When new technologies emerge, there is often a tendency to first mention side effects and call for regulation. However, if Korea wants to become a leading country in technological innovation, shouldn’t it focus more on how to utilize and develop new technologies? Even with ChatGPT, wouldn’t it be helpful for our lives to pay attention to teaching how to ask questions about ChatGPT in educational settings?

To prepare for the numerous legal issues that AI may raise in the future and to lead the world in new industrial fields, the government must proactively engage in legal research and legislative reforms. Without the government paving the way, companies will never actively invest due to regulatory risks. It is also worth considering drastically lowering the threshold for the ‘regulatory sandbox’ in the AI field, which is already in operation. In 1991, during the Roh Tae-woo administration, the Ministry of Justice established the Unification Legal Affairs Division to study unification-era legislation, and has researched this for 30 years. Referring to this precedent, creating an organization within the Ministry of Justice to study AI-related legislation and serve as a pan-governmental control tower could greatly contribute to the development of the Republic of Korea.

Kim Ki-dong, Chief Attorney, Law Firm Robaeks