"Being Third After the US and China May Be Meaningless"
Future Tasks for South Korea in the AI Sector
Chinese AI startup Deepseek has stunned the world by developing an innovative chatbot at a low cost, prompting Ahn Cheol-soo, a member of the People Power Party, to warn, "If we fall behind in AI, the core of future industries, South Korea's future will be bleak."
On the 28th, Ahn posted on his social media, "While the world is engaged in a silent war for the future, advancing at the speed of light, it is regrettable that our country is divided and only engaged in political strife, moving further away from competition."
He emphasized, "(Deepseek) created an inference model comparable to OpenAI's latest model with less than 6 million USD (about 8.6 billion KRW) in costs," adding, "They made it open source for anyone to use. Even former U.S. President Donald Trump regarded it as a wake-up call for the United States."
Ahn diagnosed, "It is shocking that a Chinese startup caught up so early with the U.S. AI tech giants who had been far ahead. For us, who have set the goal of becoming one of the global AI top three, this is truly frightening," and added, "Given the already large gap between the U.S. and China and other countries in AI, if the gap widens further, being third may not hold much meaning."
He identified future tasks for South Korea as ▲ making large-scale national investments like China ▲ creating technological innovations beyond existing paradigms and the systems that enable them ▲ focusing on nurturing AI-specialized startups.
Regarding investment, he pointed out, "China is known to invest 1,800 trillion KRW in the AI industry by 2030, with 410,000 research personnel. We plan to invest about 65 trillion KRW by 2027, with only about 20,000 researchers." On systems, he said, "Currently, AI hardware is led by NVIDIA's GPUs, and software by OpenAI's ChatGPT," adding, "Deepseek achieved better results based on low-performance chipsets due to U.S. export restrictions. This shows that the existing order is not eternal and can be overturned anytime through technological innovation." He also stressed, "New technology development and innovation are impossible under the existing positive regulations," and argued, "We need to expand the so-called negative regulation system, like in the U.S., where all activities are allowed unless explicitly prohibited, especially in areas requiring innovation."
He urged the political sphere, "Leave trials to the judiciary, and the government and ruling and opposition parties should focus on people's livelihoods, the economy, and future industries," and added, "We should take Deepseek as a lesson and accelerate our technological innovation."
Meanwhile, Deepseek developed a generative AI model comparable to ChatGPT at low cost without using high-performance chips. This has raised questions about whether the astronomical expenses U.S. big tech companies spend on AI are reasonable. Furthermore, since Deepseek's AI model is an open-source platform that anyone can freely use and improve, concerns have emerged that Chinese companies might seize the leadership of the global AI development ecosystem in the future.
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
