"AI-based robots will not replace humans, but will act as 'intelligence amplifiers' that assist and enhance human capabilities."Ken Goldberg, professor at UC Berkeley
"Even as AI advances, jobs will not be lost. This is because AI will not replace tasks that humans can do, but will handle tasks that humans cannot."Dona Sarkar, Microsoft (MS) AI & CoPilot distribution chief
"In the next 10 to 20 years, various types of robots will coexist with humans."David Qian, CEO of Ecovacs Robotics
The largest domestic tech conference, the SMARTCLOUD SHOW 2025, was held on the 27th at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, under the theme of 'AI and the Future.' Since the start of the event at 9 a.m., more than 370 officials from the government, academia, and industry gathered, showing great interest in the changes and future that AI will bring.
This year opened with a keynote speech by Ken Goldberg, a scholar in the field of physical AI at UC Berkeley. Top executives from industry leaders such as semiconductor design powerhouse Arm, Microsoft (MS), the world's number one telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei, the largest robot vacuum manufacturer Ecovacs, and Israel's top security company Check Point were all in attendance. Hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by ChosunBiz and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), this year's event comprised a total of 12 lecture sessions.
At the opening ceremony, Song Sang-hoon, head of the information communication policy division at the Ministry of Science and ICT, read a message from Minister Bae Kyung-hun, stating, "The government is actively pursuing the establishment of a unique AI ecosystem aimed at becoming a leading AI nation, which includes securing 10,000 graphic processing units (GPUs), demonstrating domestic AI semiconductors, and supporting physical AI development. I hope this event will be a meaningful time to discuss the direction of AI technology and its social implications."
Oh Se-hoon, the mayor of Seoul, said in a video message, "Seoul City plans to build its own large-scale language model (LLM) next year to incorporate generative AI across its administration, and I hope the ideas discussed today will serve as a driving force to elevate Seoul to a global smart city."
◇ "Physical AI is just beginning… various robots specialized in different fields will emerge"
Keynote speakers noted that while the generative AI market is rapidly growing since the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, the physical AI market, which intersects with robots and autonomous vehicles, is still in its infancy. They projected that despite fears of job losses due to advancements in AI, for the time being, AI agents and AI-based task robots will assist human labor but, in the long run, will create new jobs.
Professor Ken Goldberg stated, "Although AI-based robotic technology is advancing rapidly, it still struggles to perform simple tasks like folding laundry without human intervention," and predicted that "the era of universal humanoid robots will arrive one day, but it will be challenging in the next few years." He foresees that robots specialized in specific tasks will take over repetitive and automatable daily tasks. He added, "Robots and humans will have a complementary relationship, acting as 'intelligence amplifiers' to enhance human abilities."
Dona Sarkar, Microsoft (MS) AI & CoPilot distribution chief, said, "As generative AI develops to the point where AI can create apps, concerns have grown that it will eliminate all developer jobs, but in reality, more developer positions are being created than before. While there may be jobs lost in areas where automation can replace human labor, as AI advances, the need for enhancement learning to improve AI tools is increasing, which is why developer positions related to this work are also increasing."
David Qian, CEO of Ecovacs Robotics, stated, "While there is much expectation that a single humanoid robot will replace everything, in the next 10 to 20 years, various types of robots will coexist with humans." He explained that just as sharks exist as apex predators in the ocean, while millions of other life forms coexist, the robot ecosystem will also become equally diverse.
He also believes that robots will not replace humans. CEO Qian stated, "In the near future, specialized robots in areas such as cleaning, logistics, and gardening will take root in daily life, and I believe robots are beings that return time to allow us to do the things we want by taking over the time humans previously spent on these tasks."
Zhang Byoung-Tak, head of the AI research center at Seoul National University and chairperson of the K-Humanoid Union, noted that while it is currently challenging to implement ideal physical AI with existing technology, considering the pace of AI development, a world where humanoid robots interact might come before 2050. He stated, "Currently, AI is at the level of a smart intern, but once physical AI is realized, it will serve as a family member that performs household chores," adding that "new jobs may emerge from the advancement of physical AI, similar to how tutoring engineers train robots."
Professor Zhang believes that while South Korea is disadvantaged in ultra-large AI due to data and capital gaps, there are opportunities in humanoid and physical AI as they are still in the early stages globally. He said, "Our country has the ecosystem needed for a foundation-based approach with demand corporations, component suppliers, batteries, AI semiconductors, and ICT infrastructure all in place."
◇ AI is changing the semiconductor, cloud, security, and mobility ecosystems
Experts have diagnosed that the advancement of AI is causing seismic shifts in industries such as semiconductors, cloud, security, and mobility. Mohamed Awad, senior vice president at Arm, stated, "As we enter the AI era, power consumption is significantly increasing," and added, "Arm is focusing on building a low-power AI infrastructure ecosystem that can deliver peak performance with minimal power consumption."
Jiao Wang, Huawei's cloud APAC vice president, emphasized, "In the AI era, cloud services optimized for AI are needed, unlike existing cloud services." Huawei has applied its AI DeepSeek to its cloud, building up vast amounts of data and numerous use cases. Vice President Wang explained, "Since the introduction of AI cloud, existing data is now being recreated as knowledge, and through this, data-based services are evolving into knowledge-based services."
As AI-based cyber attacks increase, there were opinions that more advanced tailored security solutions are needed. Dan Karpati, head of AI at Check Point (vice president), stated, "As AI's coding capabilities increase, environments are being created where even those without programming knowledge can write 'hacking code' with simple inputs, so we must utilize AI to respond to large-scale attacks just as attackers use AI," and advised that the roles of security personnel and decision-makers to control and supervise AI must be strengthened.
Mike O'Gle, head of public policy for Uber in Asia-Pacific (APAC), stated, "AI performs billions of predictions daily, coordinating global movement," and mentioned, "Uber trains or retrains 20,000 new AI models each month, performing 10 million predictions per second and 20 billion predictions a day."
Domestic corporations have also shared cases of improving services through the introduction of AI in various fields.
In the field of physical security, AI is being actively utilized to solve the dilemma that increasing security levels reduces convenience while enhancing convenience lowers security levels. Lee Min-jung, vice president of S-1, stated, "In the case of access machines based on facial recognition, it may be difficult to recognize faces as they age or when wearing masks, but S-1 has solved this problem through AI's deep learning technology that recognizes a large number of faces."
Jeong Gi-cheol, head of development at Samsung SDS IW (executive director), believes that the competitiveness of future corporations will be directly related to the number of employees who effectively utilize AI or agents. He stated, "No matter how good an AI solution is introduced, if it is not utilized well, it will become obsolete."
There were also arguments that investment in securing high-quality data should be expanded to improve the quality of AI-based services. Chu Min-sik, head of AI advanced technology research at LG CNS, emphasized, "Securing the strongest AI model is not as crucial as securing high-quality data, which is key to the success of 'agentic AI' (an autonomous AI system that sets its own goals, makes judgments, and acts)." He further stated, "Since 90% of the performance issues of agentic AI are due to data quality problems, investment in related infrastructure should be increased; without securing high-quality data, 80% of projects could fail, leading to an AI catastrophe that wastes billions of dollars."