Nearly a decade ago, long before ChatGPT wowed the world with its humanlike conversational abilities, Google DeepMind¡¯s artificial intelligence system stunned South Korea when it beat legendary Go player Lee Sedol during a televised tournament in Seoul.
The Go master and 18-time world champion of the centuries-old strategy game later retired, calling AI an "entity that cannot be defeated.¡± The spectacle was a warning, with then-President Park Geun-hye declaring Korean society was "ironically lucky¡± to have learned about the nascent technology¡¯s importance "before it is too late.¡±
That early shock has since morphed into one of the fastest surges in AI use anywhere in the post-ChatGPT era. And Seoul wants to turn that momentum into something rarer: durable public trust. It has become the first country to enact a comprehensive national law with its so-called AI Basic Act taking effect last month.
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