About a quarter of South Koreans already pay for AI services, compared to just 2% of Americans
South Korea is preparing to offer free generative AI services to its entire population, using the technology to help people handle everyday tasks such as booking medical appointments, finding housing, and sorting out taxes.
The program is intended to expand access to homegrown AI systems while giving the government a larger role in how they are used for everyday services.
That certainly would happen if it was just open access for any South Korean IP address.
What I think is equally likely is that this will require some government ID to access, and hoo boy does that open a dystopian can of worms.
South Korea already has nationwide online identity verification.
Yes but something I remember from 20 years ago… Maybe 15, is trying to sign up to okay a Korean mmo. I had the whole thing downloaded and ready to go, but one problem, in order to make an account I needed to enter my SK ID number. I spent like 4 hours trying to get around this check but the rabbit hole that led me down eventually taught me that this is normal in SK. I could be wrong, I’m a USian and don’t speak or read Korean, but it sure seemed like they were being required to give their version of an SSN to access an mmo.
Not good imo, but if I understood correctly entering some form of government ID wouldn’t be a dramatic change from the norm.
There are numbers that are intended to be semi public, like if you have a sales tax ID number you give that to everyone. Ssn being private is just a dumb mistake in the first place.
That’s not the issue though. The issue is that the mmo account is now linked with your identity, not that the ID is.