[ROUNDTABLE] Korea needs AI-ready ontology, should not end with developing models

Korea needs to diversify its current artificial intelligence (AI) strategy which is largely confined to developing advanced models, and expand its efforts to build AI-ready knowledge systems, infrastructure and a regulatory environment that supports practical applications, experts said during The Korea Times roundtable, “Beyond US-China AI race: Korea's strategic edge.” The participants called for greater efforts to build ontologies — structured knowledge systems that organize vast amounts of government data, institutional knowledge and the relationships between them into forms AI systems can understand and use. They also agreed to the necessity of creating a sandbox area where AI-powered technologies could be tested and deployed under a more flexible regulatory framework. Reform Party of Korea Rep. Lee Jun-seok stressed that the government’s AI strategy should focus on building national ontologies, not distributing free chatbots to the general public. “If the government's goal was to drive the nation's AI transformation, a key policy should have been to require each ministry