Can AI be a public utility? World watches Korea's bold experiment

SEATTLE — Korea's plan to give everyone free, unlimited access to artificial intelligence (AI) initially landed at home as another government technology initiative. But over the past week, foreign media and commentators have cast it in far more consequential terms: a bold experiment in treating AI as public infrastructure.

The Wall Street Journal described Korea's “AI for All” initiative as the first major state-led effort to treat generative AI as a public utility, while TechRadar, a global technology news and review publication, said other governments would be watching the experiment closely.

“Most governments still talk about artificial intelligence as something to regulate or subsidize. South Korea is trying something considerably bolder,” TechRadar said in an opinion piece this week.

The publication said Korea is treating AI access less like a premium software subscription and more like “a basic piece of national infrastructure,” a view echoed by industry experts.

“South Korea just made AI a public utility, like water and electricity,” Luis Felipe Gutman, managing partner at venture capital firm OW Ventures, wrote in a recent post.

“The gap between people who can afford AI and people who can't is one of the defining inequalities of this decade,” he added.

The reactions have cast a broader spotlight on a project that has largely been discussed in Korea in terms of its technology, cost and implications for the domestic AI industry.

Under the initiative, consortia led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao will provide general-purpose AI services free of charge and without usage limits. Beta testing is set to begin next month, ahead of a full launch in December.

The government is providing up to 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs this year and plans to cover nationwide operating costs beginning in 2027.

But the government's stated ambitions extend beyond simply providing free access to AI. Officials have described the ability to use AI as a basic competency, much like Hangeul and arithmetic, and warned that disparities in AI access could develop into broader economic and social divides.

“Korea is positioning itself as Asia's most interesting AI story, especially on diffusion,” said Pranab Baruah, an AI and technology policy expert, pointing to the country's large conglomerates, high technology adoption and the AI for All policy.

“This is essentially an industrial policy,” he added, pointing to government requirements that participating services rely on qualifying Korean-developed AI models for at least 50 percent of their AI model usage, with at least another 30 percent allocated to models developed by other Korean companies.

The initiative has also drawn significant public interest. A Reddit post about Korea's plan drew more than 13,000 upvotes, with users questioning whether unlimited access can realistically be sustained and raising concerns about computing costs and privacy.

“If this works at scale, it could change how quickly people adopt AI,” Saurabh Aggarwal, a principal data scientist at Autodesk and guest professor of AI at San José State University, said in a public post.

“Making access easy is one thing, but building the right infrastructure and guardrails will be just as important,” he added.

The experiment could ultimately test a question other governments may soon face: whether increasingly powerful AI remains a service consumers buy or becomes something governments seek to make universally accessible.