Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group, said Korea's three mega projects worth $3 trillion (about 4.3850 quadrillion won) may sound unfamiliar but are not far-fetched.
"Korea recently announced three mega projects worth $3 trillion, and while the number may be unfamiliar, it is not far-fetched," Chey said at the San Francisco AI Summit held in San Francisco on the 24th, introducing the three mega projects recently announced by President Lee Jae-myung. He described them as "an artificial intelligence (AI) project underpinning Korea's growth and a project belonging to all citizens."
Chey stressed that "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says 'more chips' every time we meet." He cited examples, saying, "Demand for memory chips is exploding from global big tech companies such as Nvidia, Broadcom, and OpenAI." Chey added, "Broadcom requested memory chips on a 'jaw-dropping scale,'" and "OpenAI asked us to give memory chips only to them."
Chey also presented three conditions for the success of the three mega projects. First, he stressed that Korea must be turned into an AI native country. "The goal is for every citizen to have at least one AI agent each," Chey said. "If that happens, Korea will become the world's AI test bed where AI can be experimented with."
The second condition he presented was the need to cut AI costs. "AI costs are too high right now," Chey said. "We must mobilize every possible method to lower token costs so that many people around the world can fully enjoy the benefits of AI." He also said, "Korea needs to make more memory chips and build more AI data centers to become a hub of AI data centers connecting the United States, Europe, and Asia in the global infrastructure sector," explaining that "these efforts will ultimately lower the cost of AI."
Chey also stressed the need to create more related jobs to build good AI governance and minimize the side effects that AI brings. "Today's AI is still at an early stage, and it will be able to make much more limitless progress going forward," Chey said. "In preparation for when it enters a mature development phase, I hope Korea and the United States will join forces to build much better AI infrastructure and an AI ecosystem."
