Korea Kicks Off AI Squid Game in Bid to Compete with US, China

Late last year, more than a thousand people converged in Seoul’s convention center as elite engineers presented their latest developments in artificial intelligence. Despite the arcane jargon filling the sprawling auditorium, it was a must-attend event for Korean technology executives and investors. The talk on the floor was that the science minister had ducked out of a parliamentary hearing on a data breach at Coupang Inc. to watch the demonstrations — a rare, high-stakes contest over who had created the best homegrown AI models.

As tens of thousands tuned into the livestreamed event, cheers and shouts erupted each time contestants stepped into the spotlight, knowing that for some of them, this would be their last appearance.