One of the world’s largest and most influential annual AI summit events has just ended in Paris, with top officials from major countries, global artificial intelligence companies, academic organizations and civil society groups attending to share their insights and make their arguments on key issues.
Participants included such global leaders in politics, diplomacy and technology innovation as French President Emmanuel Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Google's Sundar Pichai.
As reflected in the list of top-profile figures who flew to the gatherings, this year’s summit -- dubbed the AI Action Summit -- was held at one of the most critical points in time for AI-driven innovation since it took off in earnest with the launch of the ChatGPT chatbot service in November 2022.
Speeches and remarks that delegates make at various events during this kind of international gathering are usually prepared carefully so that they present the case for the countries and communities they represent. In this context, speeches and remarks by key delegates to this year’s Paris summit clearly pointed to a big change in the global debates on which direction AI innovation is headed now.
Until now, debates on AI had ranged between how humanity should regulate mostly unconfirmed but emerging risks, and how we should promote the innovation that proponents expect will benefit humanity going forward. This year’s summit made it clear that the landscape has now changed into a rivalry between a democratic bloc led by the US and an autocratic bloc led by China.
This is a very significant change that countries like South Korea, vying to make AI-led innovation an opportunity to transform their national economic strategies, should take note of. This kind of change in the landscape surrounding how to deal with AI innovation will significantly influence the way global players promote future development and compete with each other.
South Korea has long boasted that it is one of the few countries in the world that have a competitive edge in the entire AI ecosystem -- possessing producers of high-performance hardware and large language models, a highly developed internet-based industry, a sophisticated manufacturing base, and a population that is highly receptive to new things.
Based on this, South Korea has set an ambitious goal of becoming a global leader in AI innovation -- after distant leaders the US and China -- and making it a chance to transform its economy, which is now under increasing pressure from a rapidly-aging population, slowing productivity growth, and rising competition from developing economies.
South Korea, which hosted the 2024 AI summit in Seoul, also sent delegates led by Science and ICT Minister Yoo Sang-im to the Paris summit with a mission to present the country’s stance on AI innovation and assess the changing landscape regarding how to deal with the disruptive transformation.
However, there were few news reports about South Korea throughout the two-day summit period, other than an event co-hosted by the country’s privacy regulator and the OECD on data privacy policy in the age of AI.
The Science Ministry released a statement afterward that Minister Yoo met and exchanged views on pending issues with delegates from other countries. This fell far short of expectations among many people, including me, that South Korea would be able to play an active role in and lead debates on the future direction of AI innovation.
You may blame the severe domestic political instability, with President Yoon Suk Yeol suspended from duty pending the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the parliament’s impeachment motion against him. In addition, with Prime Minister Han Duck-soo also suspended from duty, the government had no choice but to send the Science Minister to the summit.
While some may say the government under Economy and Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok acting as the head of state did its best to perform key duties, this year’s summit in Paris was far more than just one of many casual events taking place at a normal time. The gathering was held at what will probably turn out to be one of the most critical moments in the history of innovation.
A ChatGPT-like large language model by Chinese startup DeepSeek has rocked global financial markets and the technology industry since making a surprisingly strong debut in late January. Some say it’s a historic moment for the AI industry because China's AI industry succeeded not just in surviving an unprecedented set of sanctions and restrictions led by the US, but made a key breakthrough.
Experts say DeepSeek’s success story gave invaluable encouragement to South Korea’s AI industry by proving that a breakthrough in this AI era can be achieved despite limitations in financial resources.
However, we should not misinterpret DeepSeek’s success as indicating that we can achieve the goal by simply declaring it, in the way we might get the answer we want by simply telling an AI chatbot to find it.
Yoo Choon-sik
Yoo Choon-sik worked for nearly 30 years at Reuters, including as the chief Korea economics correspondent, and briefly worked as a business strategy consultant. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. -- Ed.
