▲ Chey Tae-won, Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (center), discusses the agenda for AI growth in the Korean economy with Kwon Seok-jun, a professor at Sungkyunkwan University (right), and Lee Jae-wook, Director of the AI Institute at Seoul National University (left).
Chey Tae-won, Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), stated on July 17 regarding the stock price of SK Hynix, "Memory is consistently in demand, so over time, the price will trend upward."
Chairman Chey made these remarks during a discussion on artificial intelligence (AI) at the KCCI Summer Forum currently being held in Jeju. He advised, "I do not know what the stock price will be next month, but the best way to preserve your assets is to hold onto the stock rather than buying and selling it repeatedly."
He also emphasized, "AI is still like a four-year-old child, but as it matures into adulthood, memory will inevitably be required," adding, "The demand for it is bound to increase exponentially."
He continued, "This is why stock prices sometimes jump tenfold," and explained, "Prices rise when the outlook improves, but they can drop sharply if things seem less certain. Sometimes, the market adjusts to reality after rising too quickly."
Regarding the strategy for South Korea's AI industry, he proposed targeting niche markets by bypassing the hegemony competition between the United States and China.
Chairman Chey analyzed, "Future AI is not just an industry but a matter of national security. The U.S. approaches it in terms of quality, while China's strategy is to secure a price advantage."
He pointed out, "It is difficult for Korea to lower token costs, and it is also hard to beat the U.S. in quality. We must build the infrastructure, create the applications we need on top of it, and develop niche markets."
Furthermore, he stated, "Neutral countries find it difficult to make a choice between the U.S. and China, so Korea must create a situation where we can export and sell our Large Language Models (LLMs) or applications," adding, "We should not just keep selling memory; we must build and sell computing capacity."
He added, "In the future, we must change our strategy to export intelligence rather than products. We need to create and sell things that are safer or have unique advantages compared to those from the U.S. and China. This will be Korea's growth strategy."
He proposed four types of "muscles" needed for competitiveness in the AI era: thinking muscles, adaptive muscles, empathy muscles, and body skills.
Chairman Chey said, "Future education should not be about rote learning but about finding what is helpful to human life. Recently, SK Hynix announced that a university degree is not required for hiring. The era where you must have a university degree to be considered a talent is over."
He also advised, "Even if AI pretends to understand, it cannot empathize. An empathetic heart and actions will be important in the future," and added, "There will be more startups, which means more failures, and in those times, people with resilience are needed. You must learn from failure and become a better person."
He also pointed out that the goal of AI development is not cost reduction.
Chairman Chey said, "Employees will not lose their jobs just because we continue to train AI agents to increase productivity," and added, "Instead of thinking first about cutting costs, we should find other work for the remaining personnel to do."
He further predicted, "We must keep finding and creating new work that we haven't done or thought of before. That is how a company moves in a direction of growth. Employees can also become all-round players who are not limited to specific job functions, and they can work like 'N-jobbers' or freelancers who do not work for just one company."
(Photo: Courtesy of KCCI, Yonhap News)
※
Copying, redistribution, and unauthorized use in AI training are strictly prohibited.