AlphaGo fever affects nominations

Song Hee-kyung

By Yi Whan-woo

The main political parties are trying to capitalize on the recent AlphaGo-versus-Lee Se-dol go matches held in Seoul, by placing an engineer, a mathematician and a scientist on their respective lists of proportional representation candidates for the April 13 general election.

The ruling Saenuri Party picked Song Hee-kyung, an Internet of Things (IoT) expert, on the top of its list amid growing public interest of artificial intelligence.

Topping the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK)’s list of candidates for non-electoral seats is Park Kyung-mi, a mathematics professor at Hongik University.

Shin Yong-hyun, chief of the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science was given the top spot by the minor People’s Party.

The proportional representation seats will be allocated to parties in proportion to the overall number of votes they receive. And the higher the candidates are ranked, the greater their chances are.

It is certain that they all will be given Assembly seats.

The parties’ selection comes after surprise victory of AlphaGo, Google’s computer algorithm, over top-ranked go player Lee Se-dol from Korea and growing call to nurture science and technology to catch up in artificial intelligence industry.

Song, was a chief of the telecommunication giant KT’s IoT. She is the vice president of KT’s GiGA IoT business division and chairwoman of the Korea Association of Cloud Industry.

Korea’s renowned oo player Cho Hoon-hyun also won a ticket with the Saenuri Party, taking the 14th spot.

MPK spokesman Kim Sung-soo said. “We’ve invited Park as we’re aware of the fact that mathematics is the key to develop artificial intelligence program,”

The People's Party also put Oh Se-jeong, a physics and astronomy professor on its proportional representation candidate list.