Korea Opens AI, Digital Safety R&D Program for Small Businesses - thelec.net

South Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups has cheerfully announced a 'new round' of its interminably-named 'Digital-Based Industrial Accident Prevention Technology Development Program'. Because when you think 'workplace safety' you think 'small business with fewer than 50 employees finally getting state-funded AI research'. The logic, presumably, is that the same technology that hallucinates invoices and recommends replacing your entire workforce with a chatbot will help prevent your factory worker from losing a finger. Marvellous.

The Ministry claims this is about supporting AI and digital safety R&D for the little guys. Of course, 'supporting' means handing out grants that will be eaten alive by consultancy fees, compliance costs, and the admin required to prove you haven't accidentally trained a model on trade secrets. The first round, one imagines, yielded a few dashboards that turn red when a worker exceeds the permitted number of toilet breaks. Now we're onto the 'new round' – presumably because the first failed to reduce accidents but succeeded in wasting taxpayer money, which is South Korean government tradition.

But let's not be cynical: the program targets enterprises with less than 50 employees – precisely the outfits least likely to have the expertise to integrate AI safely. The Ministry is essentially providing free ammunition for the next workplace disaster, all under the banner of 'digital transformation'. The program's name itself is a masterpiece of bureaucratic obfuscation, a phrase so clunky it could cause a software crash just by being typed. One can only hope the actual technology has better error handling than the ministry's branding department.