Korea offers incentives to expand AI across government

South Korea's Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced Tuesday incentives for civil servants who use artificial intelligence, including promotion points and cash rewards, to support the government's goal of training 20,000 'AI Champions' by 2030. The plan expands the AI Government Lab's capacity from about 200 to 6,000 simultaneous users and provides coding tools and GPUs, addressing survey findings that 68 percent of respondents cited insufficient infrastructure as a major obstacle.

South Korea plans to reward civil servants who put artificial intelligence to work, including through points that apply to consideration for promotions and cash incentives, as it seeks to build a government workforce capable of developing and deploying AI tools. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety unveiled the measures at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday as a follow-up to the government’s broader plan announced in August to introduce AI-based work systems across major branches of government. The measures are designed to support the government’s existing goal of training 20,000 “AI Champions” by 2030. The target represents about 2 percent of employees at administrative bodies and public institutions. AI Champions are defined as in-house specialists capable of using AI to solve problems in public administration. From individual experiments to governmentwide support At the center of the initiative is the AI Government Lab, a development and testing platform launched in July that allows civil servants to build prototypes using conversational coding, AI coding tools and public data. Participation has expanded rapidly since the pilot began. As of Thursday, 2,073 public-sector employees had registered as developers via the government’s development repository. Of 770 projects registered, 376 have been made available for use by other agencies. The Interior Ministry said, however, that much of the experimentation has depended on the initiative and technical ability of individual employees because few agencies provide adequate environments for development or access to paid AI tools. In a ministry survey, 68 percent of respondents cited insufficient development infrastructure and a lack of subscriptions to AI coding tools as major obstacles. Under the new plan, the government will establish a support system covering multiple agencies and provide the AI Government Lab with coding tools, graphics processing units and other computing resources that may be difficult for individual employees or agencies to secure. The ministry plans to increase the lab’s capacity from about 200 simultaneous users to as many as 6,000. Rewards and room to experiment Certified AI Champions could receive benefits including additional points in promotion evaluations, cash incentives, higher fees for giving AI-related lectures and opportunities to attend outside training programs. The government also plans to assess agencies on their progress in adopting AI, possibly beginning next year. Successful AI projects may be considered for government innovation awards. Civil servants will not be penalized for unforeseen results from AI experiments if they follow required procedures and safety standards, unless the outcome involves intentional misconduct or gross negligence, the ministry said. Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung said the success of an AI-enabled government depends on individual civil servants using the technology to solve problems encountered in their day-to-day work. “We will create an environment in which individual officials can freely and quickly test their ideas, while the government takes responsibility for quality, security and operations when those ideas are applied to actual work and public services,” Yoon said. “Once their effectiveness has been verified, the results will be shared across government.” minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com