Korea Must Share AI Gains, Not Just Chase Them

The article distinguishes AI's impact from earlier industrial revolutions by highlighting its exponential innovation. Unlike the steam engine or electricity, which raised productivity through accumulated physical infrastructure, AI leverages existing digital infrastructure. This allows for rapid performance improvements, cost reductions, and swift adoption across diverse sectors, including manufacturing, medicine, and public administration.

This exponential growth is attributed to three structural features: the near-zero cost of replicating AI models, enabling widespread intellectual labor support; AI's recursive self-improvement, where advanced AI accelerates its own development; and its general-purpose nature, spreading across nearly every industry. These factors contribute to its projected labor productivity lift of 1% to 3.3% annually, which is higher than the 1% to 2% seen in prior revolutions.

While AI offers benefits like accelerating drug discovery and addressing climate change, it also carries risks such as potential structural unemployment and widening income disparities. The concentration of wealth among entities controlling data, platforms, capital, and AI infrastructure risks exacerbating inequalities between companies, social classes, and nations. This necessitates a national strategy to manage social impact and ensure shared prosperity.

Korea's proposed national strategy focuses on three areas: education reform to build AI literacy and establish job-transition systems under state responsibility; a new distribution system, including review of a robot tax or levies on AI-generated value; and a balanced approach to innovation and safety, through institutional guidelines for trustworthy AI alongside flexible regulatory sandboxes. These measures aim to prepare society for rapid technological shifts.