Time to prepare for the fourth industrial revolution

Korean Go grandmaster Lee Se-dol has claimed victory on Sunday for the first time in the fourth match against AlphaGo, Google’s artificial intelligence program. It is impressive because the victory came after he lost three straight matches to AlphaGo and many people predicted that he would lose all of the five matches. Some experts including the Korean Baduk (Go) Association complained that it is unfair because he competed against 1,200 computers, but the argument has become meaningless. Though artificial intelligence would outpace humans’ capacity in areas such as Go eventually, it showed that the machine is not perfect yet.

Korea should not overreact to Lee Se-dol’s victory. It is important to channel the national interest in artificial intelligence, which increased exponentially after the Go matches, into a positive energy. It is fortunate for us that the historic matches between a human and artificial intelligence take place in Korea, not in China or Japan. While watching the matches real-time, Koreans have realized human beings’ arrogance, the speed of developing techniques, the new wave of the fourth industrial revolution focused on artificial intelligence and the infinite possibility of human’s mental power.

To take a snapshot of artificial intelligence in Korea, Science, ICT and Future Planning Minister Choi Yang-hee visited the R&D centers of Samsung Electronics and LG electronics on Sunday. The researchers asked for the government’s support in a meeting with the minister, saying, “Research and development on intelligence information technology is underway, but it falls short of our global competitors.” If America's level of AI development is 100, Korea stands at only 75 now. It is far behind Japan (89.3) and a little ahead of China (71.9). What we need to do is move fast in preparation for the fourth industrial revolution which will be about artificial intelligence.

The man-machine match should be a watershed for the government. It decided to legislate a special act to designated “regulation-free zones” by region to ease regulations last month, which is an old-fashioned method. It needs to take a proactive action that would eliminate regulations that could be in the scope of the fourth industrial revolution, where the world competes such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality. It should overhaul the framework to enable brand-new industries can be created in the new industrial revolution, instead of protecting existing industries or the privileged.

Some predict that the artificial intelligence revolution would eliminate 7.1 million jobs in the future, but new jobs will also be created thanks to it. We should start from what we can do to lead the upcoming industrial revolution initiated by artificial intelligence, instead of fearing it.