South Korea to spend $1T on more memory chip production and humanoid robots (arstechnica.com)

South Korea has unveiled a massive $1 trillion investment plan aimed at enhancing its global standing in memory chip production, establishing new AI data centers, and advancing the development of humanoid robots by 2028. This initiative responds to the soaring demand for memory chips driven by the AI boom, as companies like Samsung and SK Hynix record significant profits amid supply shortages that have inflated consumer electronics prices. President Lee Jae Myung emphasized the urgency of securing key components of AI infrastructure—semiconductors, physical AI, and data centers—as vital to the country’s technological advancement. The government and leading tech firms, notably Samsung and SK Hynix, plan to invest $585 billion in building new chip fabrication plants, aiming to double South Korea’s production of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) over the next five years. Meanwhile, Hyundai is striving to integrate humanoid robots, developed by Boston Dynamics, into various industries, particularly in manufacturing. However, this ambitious push has sparked discussions about income inequality, given the substantial profits of chipmakers during the AI surge, and concerns from labor unions regarding the potential displacement of workers by robots.