How to stop AI from becoming the enemy of younger workers
Seniority-biased hiring patterns in South Korea carry a lesson for the rest of the world.
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Young people in South Korea were struggling in the labour market even before ChatGPT’s release in late 2022.
PHOTO: EPA
Sarah O’Connor
Viewed from afar, South Korea looks like a clear winner from the rise of artificial intelligence. Some of its biggest companies are booming because of the global appetite for chips and data centres. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, its leading chipmakers, have both topped US$1 trillion (S$1.29 trillion) in market capitalisation.
And because these companies have powerful unions, their workers are securing a share of the surge in profits. For example, in May, Samsung and its union came to a profit-sharing agreement that is expected to award employees in the memory chip division an average bonus of nearly US$400,000. Little wonder that South Korea is one of the few large countries where optimists about AI outnumber pessimists, according to polling by the Pew Research Center.
