One of the things I learned at ICML this year is that Korea is only pretending to take AI seriously.
The hype surrounding Korean AI startups is absurdly inflated, and the same goes for university researchers. Compared with China, we are honestly nothing.
Korea needs to copy China’s playbook. We should launch something similar to the Thousand Talents Plan to bring back brilliant Koreans working overseas and aggressively poach top foreign AI talent.
Otherwise, Korea will simply become an AI-dependent country.