Seoul: South Korea is well positioned to lead the next phase of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, where the technology is increasingly becoming core infrastructure of economies and societies, an executive from OpenAI said Wednesday. Jason Kwon, the chief strategy officer (CSO) of Open AI, the developer behind ChatGPT, made the remarks at a press conference in Seoul, noting that making advanced intelligence broadly useful is the "opportunity ahead" for the sector as a whole.
According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea is especially well positioned for such a shift due to its high adoption and interest in AI, as well as the country's "full stack economy" of strong infrastructure, sophisticated semiconductor companies, and a highly skilled developer community. Kwon highlighted that ChatGPT now serves more than 900 million weekly active users globally, and more than 1 million business customers use OpenAI as technology in their organizations.
South Korea plays a significant role in this momentum, ranking among the top 10 markets globally for ChatGPT weekly active users, business customers, and paid subscribers. This growing adoption is why OpenAI is committed to partnering with South Korea for its AI transformation. As part of such a partnership, OpenAI is rolling out a new cybersecurity initiative dedicated to South Korea, called "The Korea Cyber Action Plan," as part of its Daybreak cybersecurity initiative.
Under the plan, OpenAI will provide briefings and demonstrations of its latest cybersecurity capabilities and expand government agencies and local companies' access to its "Trusted Access of Cyber (TAC)" program, which offers limited access to specialized cyber permissive AI models of the company. South Korea is among the three countries taking part in the program, along with the United States and Japan, while discussions to include nations in Europe are also under way.
"Our commitment is to work with Korea to make advanced AI broadly useful, responsibly deployed, and supporter of the country's long-term resilience and growth," Kwon added.