"If I could go back to my 20s, I would start a company without question. I would want to take on the hardest problems facing Korea and humanity."
Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group (034730.KS), made the remarks while lecturing on "AI, New Capitalism and Youth" in season six of EBS's "Great Minds," broadcast over five days from the 12th to the 16th. Chey, the first South Korean business leader to appear on the program, laid out his thinking on the country's future, its growth strategy and the changing nature of work in the age of artificial intelligence through three lectures and two conversations with young participants.
Asked what he would take on if he returned to his 20s, Chey said, "First of all, I would start a company without question." He added, "It would not be a chip business like the one I run now. I would use every means available to solve the hardest problems facing Korea and humanity, or problems that cause suffering for many people."
Citing water shortages, carbon emissions and food shortages as examples, he said, "If existing methods cannot solve the problem, I would look for ways to supply food even if that meant creating new farming methods or developing artificial foods." He added, "I imagine I would be tackling problems like those."
He also advised young people that "you start by solving the small problems within your reach, and as that experience accumulates you can build progressively bigger solutions."
Chey offered a new perspective on how AI will change employment. "Until now we have thought of a job as working set hours in one company and one occupation, but AI can change that idea," he said. If AI allows work that once took eight hours to be finished in one or two, he explained, the remaining time can be used freely or spent on other work.
Education, too, must move away from transmitting knowledge and testing it, he said. "What matters more than a university diploma itself is the experience of actually having solved a problem," Chey said. "The ability to define problems and ask questions, the capacity for empathy and a willingness not to fear failure will become important."
"A leader in the age of AI has to do what AI cannot do," he said. "What matters is using AI to define and solve the problems your organization and society face." He stressed: "AI is a tool that raises intelligence, but intelligence is not wisdom. Solving problems ultimately requires understanding people and moving them."
To that end, he named four capabilities young people should develop: the power to think, the capacity for empathy, the muscle to adapt, and body skills. "If you wait until every safeguard is in place so that you never fail, you may instead fall behind the pace at which AI is evolving," Chey said. "You need the resilience to get back up after failing and try again."
In his earlier lectures, he proposed a reward system for solving social problems, a transition to an AI-native society and a Korea-Japan economic alliance as paths to sustainable growth for the country. He singled out speed, scale and safety — the "three S's" — as the core of national competitiveness in the AI era, and argued for using AI to cut social costs and drive industrial innovation.
On the proposed economic alliance, he said, "If Korea and Japan develop into an economic community, they could form a market worth about $6 trillion," and called for expanded cooperation in energy, AI, health care, tourism and venture businesses and startups.
"In the end, I think this is about designing a new country that grows again," Chey said. "If young people put forward new ideas and think about this together, we can make Korea's future a bright one."