A Survival Check-In After a Long Absence
It had been a long time since I turned on a live broadcast. In the past, when I ran the program in seasons, I sometimes took a month or two off. More recently, however, I had continued broadcasting without much of a break. Perhaps that was why sitting in front of the camera again after a short pause felt so unfamiliar and awkward.
This summer was unusually merciless. Even Busan, Yangsan, and the surrounding Gyeongsangnam-do area, which used to be cooler than other regions, saw temperatures of 37, 38, and 39 degrees Celsius. It was difficult enough for me to call it the worst heat I had experienced in my fifty years. This broadcast was not a carefully prepared lecture with a grand theme. It was a chance to report that I was still alive and speak comfortably with viewers. I decided to postpone the next episode of “Liberation and Civilization,” which I had been doing every Monday, until the following week after getting through the heat.
I also spoke about the Barobul Buddhism offline gathering in Busan. Once a month, on the third Saturday, we meet in person and talk about Buddhism and life. If the channel and local communities become more active, we may eventually hold meetings in other regions and have me visit them. For now, however, we are maintaining only the Busan gathering. This time, we decided to meet on August 15, Liberation Day.
AI Has Designed a Viral Genome
The first major story we examined was that Stanford researchers had used Evo 2, a generative AI system, to design viral genomes not found in nature and synthesize viruses that actually functioned. This was not simply a matter of collecting a virus from nature or slightly modifying an existing one. AI generated the blueprint of life encoded in DNA—the genome—and designed new bacteriophages. That is why I called this news the beginning of artificial life.
A virus cannot reproduce on its own. It must depend on another living organism to copy itself. A bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria. Of the immense number of viruses on Earth, only a tiny fraction directly harms human beings, while many use microorganisms as hosts. The researchers tested the AI-designed bacteriophages against nonpathogenic E. coli and explained that some eliminated bacteria more effectively than the natural PhiX174 phage.
Antibiotic Resistance and the Possibility of Targeted Treatment
Bacteriophages matter because they are connected to the problem of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics have treated countless bacterial infections, but bacteria constantly mutate and can acquire the ability to withstand them. This is not a problem that ends if one person or one region uses antibiotics carefully. If antibiotics are overused on the other side of the planet and resistant bacteria emerge there, those bacteria can eventually make their way to us. When bacteria that existing antibiotics cannot kill spread, we may lose the means to treat them. That makes this a global problem.
Antibiotics do not selectively kill only the bacteria causing an illness. They can also kill beneficial microorganisms in our intestines that contribute to digestion and health. The diarrhea some people experience after taking antibiotics is related to that disruption. A bacteriophage, by contrast, can potentially be developed to attack only a specific bacterium. As I jokingly put it during the broadcast, instead of sweeping away all the other bacteria, it may be possible to target and “smash only that bastard.” That is why phages have long been studied as treatments that could replace or supplement antibiotics.
The Age of Designing Life and the Question of Biosecurity
The significance of this achievement does not end with the creation of a single virus. Viruses were chosen first because they are structurally simple and have been studied for a long time. Today the target is a bacteriophage, but the possibility is opening up that we may one day design bacteria and even the genomes of more complex organisms. We are moving beyond an era in which we merely observed organisms produced by evolution or strengthened particular traits through breeding. We are entering an era in which human beings write the blueprint of a new organism directly. That is why researchers compared this moment to biology’s “Wright brothers moment.”
Yet the risk is as great as the promise. We must consider why the researchers emphasized that they worked in a secure laboratory with nonpathogenic E. coli. If a badly designed virus were accidentally released, or if someone weaponized the technology for war and attack, a biosecurity crisis once confined to films and novels could become real. The ability to design new genomes may be a breakthrough for medicine and synthetic biology, but it may also become a technology that threatens humanity and states.
The problem is that law, institutions, politics, and philosophy cannot keep pace with technology. Until now, humanity has spent years arguing and negotiating before establishing a single international standard. Changes driven by AI, however, arrive every day like waves or a tsunami. Presidents, lawmakers, scientists, engineers, humanities scholars, and intellectuals must debate them rapidly and deeply from philosophical, political, economic, security, and biological perspectives, but our familiar decision-making structures are far too slow. I am not saying that speed alone matters. I am saying that, in order to judge more correctly, we must think and reach agreements far more quickly than before.
Will We Laugh Off the Moment Jobs Disappear?
At that point, I recalled a scene involving President Lee Jae-myung that I had recently watched. A government official showed a promotional video for the country and explained that one person had made it with AI in only a few days. In the past, a project like that would have required a director, camera operators, editors, actors, voice actors, writers, many other workers, a large budget, and a long production period. The president remarked that people working in video production and actors would then have nothing to live on, but he smiled and let the matter pass like a joke.
I was devastated by that scene. I was not trying to attack Lee Jae-myung’s character. I even said that I liked him. But a person who occupies the public office of president must not laugh off a scene in which countless people are losing their jobs. If AI can reduce the time and cost of video production to one-hundredth of what they were, that is not merely an amusing novelty. It is a signal of labor-market collapse.
You’re the president, damn it. You must not laugh while talking about countless people losing their jobs because of AI. Get a grip. Even if you cannot produce a policy immediately, do not speak about it with a smile.
This was the core of my anger. One president cannot immediately produce every solution. If I were made president and ordered to provide an answer, I could not offer a complete remedy on the spot either. But he must recognize the gravity of the problem and receive it from the standpoint of the people who will suffer. It is difficult to feel another person’s pain as one’s own, but that is precisely what presidents, lawmakers, and intellectuals are there to do. If they care only about their own affairs, why enter politics, and why call themselves intellectuals?
The Zoox Robotaxi Without a Steering Wheel or Pedals
The second story was that Zoox, Amazon’s autonomous-driving subsidiary, had received approval for paid commercial operation of a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel or pedals. Existing robotaxis were production cars originally designed for people to drive and then equipped with autonomous-driving hardware and sensors. Consequently, even when no human was driving, they retained steering wheels, pedals, side mirrors, and a clear distinction between front and rear.
The Zoox vehicle was designed from the beginning on the assumption that AI, not a human being, would drive it. There is no steering wheel for a person to hold and no brake or accelerator pedal to press. Its four seats face one another rather than all looking forward. The distinction between the front and rear of the vehicle is also weak. It can park while moving in one direction and then leave in the opposite direction without turning the body around. The very form of the automobile, built around a human driver, is disappearing.
For a vehicle like this to travel on public roads, technology alone cannot change. Existing laws must also change: rules requiring mirrors and steering wheels, standards defining the front and rear of a car, and requirements for license plates. Approval of Zoox’s paid service therefore means not only that a new car was approved, but also that the legal framework built around human driving has begun to change. Its ability to begin paid passenger service in Las Vegas, Nevada, and expand to other regions is a sign that fully autonomous driving has moved beyond experiments and into commercial reality.
What Happens to the Million People Who Make a Living by Driving?
In Korea, test operations of autonomous trucks that do not require direct human control have also begun. These vehicles may enter Korean roads at scale within ten years if we take the long view, or within five years if we take the short view. When that happens, taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers, and substitute drivers—people who make their living by driving—will be among the first to lose their jobs.
When I researched this while writing a book three years ago, more than one million people in Korea depended on road transport and driving for their livelihood. The precise current figure would need to be checked again, but the scale is plainly not dozens or hundreds of people. What policies, then, are the government and political establishment preparing? If politicians simply watch it like a fire in someone else’s country because they themselves do not drive for a living, why are they in politics at all?
Losing a job is not a single line in a statistical table. For someone, it means the collapse of a family’s livelihood. For another, it may become the reason they end their life. That is why I could not bear to see people smile and move on when this was not something to laugh about. We are living in an age when AI designs viral genomes and robotaxis that human passengers cannot control begin commercial service. I am not saying that we should stop technology, nor am I calling for a Luddite movement. I am saying that we must begin a serious discussion now about how to share the shock when technology destroys people’s lives, whom to protect, and what kind of society to build.
Recognition Must Come Before Policy
In this broadcast, I used two AI stories to discuss the responsibility of politicians and intellectuals. I shouted harshly at President Lee Jae-myung, but the heart of my criticism was not personal hatred. It was a criticism of a way of seeing that treats the gravity of AI’s daily transformation of biological design, the labor market, law, and safety as material for a joke.
A complete policy may not emerge immediately. No one can produce every answer alone. But that does not mean we can smile and pass by. Policy begins by looking directly at what is happening and treating the pain of those who will lose their jobs as a real problem. This is not merely a problem of one or two advisers. It is a problem of recognition. If the president, politicians, and intellectuals cannot correct that recognition first, technology will continue racing forward each day while society remains behind and suffers an even greater shock.
This article was edited by AI solely from the supplied video captions and description. No external sources were used.