[Dong-cheol Kim (김동철), a professor in the AI Applications Department at Hansung University] When a new technology emerges, do people rush to get its benefits? Or do they cling to old habits and watch from a distance as others use it? Then and now, the voices of entrenched interests have power that cannot be ignored. Uber taxi services are being operated differently from their original intent because of industry backlash.

All passenger cars, including private vehicles, should be able to join transport services during idle time, but in reality only existing taxi drivers are operating through an app called “Uber Taxi”. Airbnb should also allow spare rooms in all buildings to be used as lodging, but in South Korea it can be used only by foreigners, so it too is operating only halfway. Rather than saying something is wrong, South Korea’s reality can be assessed as not mature enough to roll out innovative businesses based on new technologies and ideas.

There was historically similar resistance as new technologies changed the world. In 15th-century Europe, two groups expressed strong concern about the emergence of metal movable type. They were the Catholic Church and guilds that produced existing handwritten books. The Catholic Church feared a weakening of religious authority and was also wary of unchecked knowledge spreading indiscriminately.

Those who had monopolised books by producing manuscripts also pushed back strongly, worried their business base would collapse. Even so, it ultimately became a starting point for the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution, and is regarded as an important historical turning point. The emergence of textile machinery in 18th-century Britain, known for the first Industrial Revolution, was also far from smooth.

There was not only resistance from existing artisans, but also strong wariness of the appearance and spread of new textile devices because they threatened the status of skilled craftsmen. On the other hand, resistance by Luddite workers who advocated violent machine-breaking was also formidable. But this, too, was not enough to stop the wave of mechanisation and in the end merely accelerated the Industrial Revolution.

When railways appeared in Europe in the early 19th century, carriage operators and landowners opposed them fiercely, citing the collapse of transport monopolies and issues over land compensation rights. One more group opposed them unexpectedly. It was doctors. An absurd episode unfolded in which they even published papers opposing railways, saying the use of fast transport would cause abnormalities in the brain. The outcome was obvious. With no other means surpassing railways commercially or militarily, their spread was unstoppable despite various opposition movements. In many other areas, including light bulbs and gas lamps, cars and carriages, and the internet and traditional media, new technologies in every era have matured by overcoming friction with established forces and are ultimately changing the world.

Mustafa Suleyman, a Syrian immigrant and a co-founder of DeepMind, mentioned a “Sputnik moment” in his 2024 book “The Coming Wave”. It refers to the 1957 incident in which the Soviet Union launched the first soccer ball-sized artificial satellite, “Sputnik”, and the United States felt a strong sense of crisis, even calling it a “technological Pearl Harbor attack”. The United States set up dedicated bodies such as NASA and made an astronomical investment in the Apollo project known as a “moonshot”, eventually overtaking the Soviet Union and taking the lead in the space race. The Soviet Union was driven to the brink of bankruptcy while trying to catch up. This phenomenon, in which a shock from a competitor becomes the fuse for technological development, is called a “Sputnik moment”.

In South Korea, only the match between Lee Chang-ho (이창호), a 9-dan professional, and AlphaGo is talked about, but the later match between China’s Ke Jie and AlphaGo did not spread widely because of Chinese government internet censorship. Ke Jie’s defeat, however, dealt a big blow to China’s pride, and it became the catalyst for China to set out the goal of staking all national capabilities on the development of science and technology. Thanks to China’s top-down model, which can mobilise all resources to support new technologies, it has produced results in a short period that do not lag the United States, across research and industry in fields such as AI, quantum computers and life sciences. This is an example of the United States providing China with a “Sputnik moment”.

AI theory at one point became so common that universities even opened lectures on artificial neural networks, but it went through an ice age in which it did not receive attention for a long time. But at a time when the internet and big data operate like air as part of the world’s infrastructure, AI finally declared itself to the world, led by the AlphaGo match. It broke through long-frozen negative views of AI in an instant and emerged into the world.

The team that developed AlphaGo was also called “AI’s Manhattan Project”. In the end, the AlphaGo event was another “Sputnik moment” in which today’s AI spread through the world. History repeatedly proves that future-oriented new technologies sometimes gain greater strength by enduring opposition and competition. South Korea, too, is hoped to be able to create its own Sputnik moment.