When grandmaster Lee Se-dol was beaten 4-1 at the Chinese board game go by Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo last year, his compatriots in South Korea were not merely disappointed but gripped by fear. In particular, they felt a profound anxiety that the country might be falling behind in the next big trend.
The high-profile computer match made AI and deep learning into buzzwords, prompting the government and business to announce plans to invest billions of dollars to try to catch up with the likes of Google’s DeepMind.
The phenomenon highlighted South Korea’s obsession with developing technology, which has made it the world’s 11th-largest economy in just half a century. Economists say the country’s emphasis on research and development has bolstered its global competitiveness.