사진 확대 Ryu Joong-hee, the CEO of Real World. Reporter Han Joo-hyung
“Korea and Japan can collaborate best in the era of physical artificial intelligence (AI). If the two countries create a collaborative model, they will certainly have a chance of winning the global market.”
CEO Ryu Joong-hee, who recently met at Real World headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, stressed the need for cooperation between Korea and Japan in the field of physical AI. CEO Ryu is a serial entrepreneur and deep tech investment expert. Before the Real World, he founded “Ola Works,” an augmented reality (AR) company, and sold it to Intel in the U.S.
Ryu was confident that South Korea and Japan could be the biggest beneficiaries of the era of physical AI. This is because the three beats of “human resources, supply chains, and market demand” are equipped at the same time. CEO Ryu explained, “The physical AI ecosystem is like doing a kind of group project,” adding, “A variety of stakeholders, from data collection to robot foundation model development to robot hardware manufacturing, have to move together like cogs, and Korea and Japan are almost the only countries that meet these requirements.”
In both Korea and Japan, it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure manpower at manufacturing sites as the shortage of workers intensifies due to rapid aging. On the other hand, the U.S. has a lot of venture capital, but it is difficult to secure labor-intensive data. China relies on government subsidies to produce only low-cost humanoids, making it difficult to do the high-level work required for the site.
Therefore, CEO Ryu argues that Korea and Japan should create a collaborative model. Japan has a larger manufacturing industry that can secure high-quality data than Korea, and Korea has better AI research and performance than Japan, so it can create synergy. CEO Ryu said, “We should approach the Korea-Japan collaboration model by using the depth of field data, which is an asymmetric asset only between Korea and Japan, as a weapon.”
The government also announced the idea of making choices and focusing on robot transformation (RX). CEO Ryu said, “About three years and around 2030 is the golden time to commercialize and commercialize physical AI such as humanoids in industrial sites,” and stressed, “The government should select companies that are firm in RX and provide intensive support to companies that do not have demand for RX.”
[Reporter Yang]