Under the slogan “Be the First Mover in the Era of Knowledge and Information,” South Korea has emerged as one of the world’s IT powerhouses in just six years.
Incheon International Airport, the epitome of IT convergence, has been named the world's best airport for 11th consecutive years. The S. Korean financial industry, which had finished 86th behind Uganda, has risen to the world’s 7th largest, easing regulations on the separation of industrial and financial capital and granting Kakao and KT preliminary licenses to run the nation’s first online-only banks.
The Go-playing AI AlphaGo had the brand value of Google leapfrogging over that of Samsung Electronics instantly. It was all the work of software. In July 2014, I briefed S. Korean President Park Geun-hye on a plan to teach coding at elementary, middle and high schools on a pilot basis from 2015 and the plan was announced.
The historic Lee Sedol vs. AlphaGo faceoff has thrown the importance of software into sharp relief once again. What a relief!
Announcing a strategy to develop the AI industry, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) said that it would join forces with 6 conglomerates to build an AI research center and promote the development of the IoT, big data and cloud computing industries. Though such a move is long overdue, it still bodes well for this nation’s future.
The worldwide software and content market is valued at 1.2 trillion dollars, larger than any other industry. Almost all public institutions, companies and individuals use foreign-made software in S. Korea. Although S. Korea has come out on top in e-government and aviation services for 11 straight years, they are all built on foreign-made software.
As a result, whenever we win a competitive bid, 89 percent of what we are paid goes to the foreign software makers. As a result, job creation and the internationalization of Korean software remain pretty much elusive. Besides, using internationally common software and standardized open sources make us vulnerable to hacking attacks.
The history of AI traces back to 1996 when world chess champion Garry Kasparov faced off against an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue and lost. The potential and power of AI were strongly felt around the world.
On Feb. 4, 2011, IBM’s Watson beat Ken Jennings (who amassed 2.5 million dollars by winning 74 games in a row on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!) and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy!.
In 2006, Geoffrey Hinton, professor at Toronto University in Canada, wrote an indepth AI research paper titled “A fast learning algorithm for deep belief nets.”
The combination of deep learning and big data has expedited the development of various fundamental technologies and voice recognition technology. In 2011, the error rate of image recognition was taken down from 25.7 percent to 4.8 percent, lower than 5 percent for humans.
Computers should be tasked with the art of enumerative combinatorics in which numerous algorithms are developed and turned into programs that collect, process, analyze and visualize data. No matter how smart a quantum computer, or a nano computer, exists, they are of no use without programming technology and framework software developed by humans.
Along with the rise of robots, 3D technology and big data, AI will definitely play a role in enhancing the status of a nation, creating jobs and raising national income. AI technology has been increasingly making an impact on varied sectors, including medicine, agriculture, biotechnology and national defense.
There is no doubt that big data technology is an indispensible tool that affects every nook and cranny of industry, but South Korea has no homegrown big data technology. That’s why the government’s push to build an AI research center should be accompanied by scaled-up efforts to develop Korean software and nurture talent.
