Trend Megatrend 2: General-purpose AI revolution

Summary

KDI treats AI not as another automation tool but as a general-purpose technology comparable to steam power or electricity. Such technologies usually raise productivity only after a lag of 15 to 25 years, once institutions, organisations and infrastructure have been rebuilt around them, just as electricity lifted factory productivity only in the 1920s. The report places AI in the middle of that lag and expects its effects to spread across society around 2045. Unlike earlier technologies, AI affects high-skill cognitive work as well as routine tasks, deepening polarisation between complementary and replaceable jobs. Key uncertainties are whether social adaptation keeps pace with diffusion and whether Korea secures sovereign AI capacity.