Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is visiting South Korea after a year and is holding a series of meetings with corporations. He expressed his intention to collaborate with Korean corporations and shared his expectations for strengthening South Korea-U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) cooperation.
Altman attended the 'Builder Lab' developer workshop held at The Plaza Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on Dec. 4. This Builder Lab is the first workshop held in South Korea, and OpenAI invited 100 representatives from domestic startups and chief technology officers (CTOs) for a private event.
He conducted a workshop session titled 'Hands-on event to help with development and innovation using AI.' The event ran for three hours from 9 a.m. to noon. The OpenAI leadership team showcased a large screen and provided participants with optimal development know-how for user cases utilizing the 'OpenAI API (application programming interface).'
Attendees at the workshop expressed surprise at OpenAI's technological capabilities. Kim Dae-hyun, an AI engineer at MakinaRocks, said, "The real-time API performance demonstrated at this Builder Lab was impressive," adding, "It worked seamlessly, even when both AI and the user were speaking at the same time, as if conversing with a real consultant." He continued, "If this technology and others showcased by OpenAI are utilized well, it seems likely to help increase productivity for individuals and corporations."
CEO Altman also held a question-and-answer session. When asked about his plans to expand in the Korean market, he replied, "Of course," noting that "South Korea has strong industries related to artificial intelligence (AI) such as semiconductors and energy, and it is one of the countries actively adopting AI."
Additionally, addressing the recent 'DeepSea Shock' from China, CEO Altman warned, "Large Language Models (LLMs) will continue to evolve rapidly," stating, "If the goal is only to solve small current problems, there is a high chance that the model will become obsolete as it develops." He further noted, "Even if there are still deficiencies, if we create products that leverage the advantages of LLMs, the companies will become more valuable as the models advance."
Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer (CPO), who also attended the workshop, commented, "We can fine-tune models using specific corporations' non-public data, but that data will never return to a public model," appearing to target DeepSea's data security issues.
Regarding the issue of AI data accuracy, CEO Altman stated, "GPT-2 produced a 50% error rate, GPT-3 reduced it to 20%, and GPT-4 has lowered it to 2%. There is a possibility that the o-series error rate could drop to one in a thousand." He added, "Even if self-driving cars are five times safer than humans, people will feel it must be ten thousand times safer before they accept it, and the same principle will apply to AI doctors."
He continued, "Of course, errors can still occur, but the more logical human thought processes become, the more AI models will progressively improve," emphasizing that "Especially as AI models develop better reasoning abilities, there will be noticeable performance enhancements."
CEO Altman also expressed his desire to discuss the medical field with Korean corporations, stating, "It is one of the most promising fields for accelerating the pace of scientific innovation and saving many lives while doing good work." He mentioned, "We have a strong interest in robotics, and the reason I'm here in Korea is to see if local corporations have an interest in this area."
Kim Dong-hwan, the representative of 42Maru who attended the workshop, stated, "Overall, it was conducted in a friendly atmosphere, and both CEO Altman and CPO Kevin answered questions quite seriously," but added, "However, since it was a developer event, I was disappointed not to hear specific answers regarding OpenAI's strategy in Korea or responses to DeepSea."
After the Builder Lab, CEO Altman moved to a private meeting with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and other key executives, where they held a meeting for about 40 minutes, then met with Kim Chang-han, the representative of KRAFTON. When asked about his impressions after the meeting with Chairman Chey, he expressed satisfaction, saying, "Wonderful."
He attended Kakao's Media Day held in the same space, embracing Jeong Shin-ah, the representative of Kakao, while announcing their official partnership. In the afternoon, he moved on to Samsung Electronics' Seocho building to continue business meetings.