Abstract
Abstract
The AlphaGo match of March 2016 in South Korea rendered the esoteric technology of artificial intelligence (AI) a household name, with the following four years witnessing a huge outpouring of related policies. This chapter explores the central features of South Korean policy discourse on AI, revealing the imprints of developmental state legacies. Most notably, an instrumentalist understanding of AI has been prevalent in government and business sectors, with AI promoted primarily as a new ‘engine of growth’. Another feature is the re-emergence of the ‘catching-up’ mantra that dominated the nation’s earlier developmental decades. Government policies to build up AI capacities rely heavily on the need to catch up with advanced countries, citing a risk of lagging behind in the global technology wars. The chapter concludes with a brief cross-national analysis of public perceptions of AI, which again shows the strong influence of developmentalism on the public discourse on AI in South Korea.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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