South Korea cannot afford to slow AI development, Deputy PM says

South Korea's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, Bae Kyung-hoon, has stated that his country will not slow down its artificial intelligence development efforts. In a Facebook post, Bae emphasized that the country cannot afford to reduce its AI progress speed. He argued that speed accountability is more crucial than speed control, noting that a nation striving to catch up in AI while establishing new markets has different circumstances compared to a leading nation adjusting its pace.

Bae clarified that for South Korea, slowing down AI development is not an option at the moment. The government plans to continue implementing the AI Basic Act without interruption, and the country will also pursue its independent foundation model and the Frontier AI model initiative. Bae's remarks follow calls from major AI executives, such as Dario Amodei from Anthropic, Sam Altman from OpenAI, and Elon Musk from xAI, to decelerate AI development due to potential threats the technology could pose to humanity.

However, some industry leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg disagree with this notion, urging AI frontier labs to be more responsible with their models.