Sometimes, Watching Korea, I See a Dystopia
Machines everywhere, humans still exhausted — technological progress without love for people is just a high-tech version of Mad Max. That is not the AI era anyone asked for.
Sometimes, watching Korea, I'm reminded of the dystopian film Mad Max.
An extraordinary tool called AI has arrived.
A technology that could, right now, reduce the work people do repetitively,
automate administration and office tasks,
and cut the time and toil expended by every single citizen.
It is usable today.
And yet, something is strange.
Rather than using the AI that exists right now
to make people's lives easier,
what looms larger is the sight of money and resources being poured
into far-off future slogans like some grand “physical AI.”
I am not against investing in technology.
Quite the opposite.
I believe technology must ultimately exist for people.
Shrinking a two-hour daily task to ten minutes,
eliminating pointless paperwork,
freeing people from repetitive labor,
letting them live better lives with less effort.
Isn't that what a nation should think about first
in the AI era?
But if we leave people to struggle exactly as before
while shouting only the names of grand future technologies,
then that technology policy contains no human beings.
Watching Korea, I often think this:
technology advances so fast —
why don't people's lives get easier at anywhere near that speed?
Technological progress that does not love people
is, in the end, just a high-tech version of Mad Max.
A world overflowing with machines
where the humans stay exhausted.
The AI era people actually want
does not look like that.
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