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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