I studied religious studies at university before earning a master's degree in French translation. After graduating, I spent three years working as an interpreter and translator on a Korean overseas ODA software development project, where I learned how technology can make a positive difference to society and what it takes to get there. I also had a chance to take part in a government project to translate French legislation into Korean. These experiences taught me that law, policy and systems shape behavior more than culture does, and gave me a deeper appreciation for humanity's heritage of knowledge production, legal and administrative systems, and sheer will that have sustained them.
We have arrived in a world plastered with the word “AI.” They say that if AI ever comes to rule over humans, it will look not like an AI holding a gun but like an AI as bureaucrat. But even if the hallucination rate were finally brought down to 0% and AI conquered facts, could truth ever be conquered? Truth takes shape only when value judgment is added to the raw material of facts. Even if we have no choice but to allow some number of AI bureaucrats, human representatives must be able to stand up to the truth that AI assembles. To do that, humans must keep the flame of value judgment alive. And because facts are the foundation on which value judgment rests, learning must continue, even as the way we learn changes. That's why I want to build an environment that reinvents how people take in information and how they learn and practice new things.
“A bad system will beat a good person every time” - W. Edward Deming
The systems I care about are the ones that keep the flame of will burning and make it stronger, the ones that tilt the whole playing field in people's favor. That is also why I made my first app, ‘Gieokhaebeop.’ If studying for an exam is “pouring water into a bottomless jar,” I wanted to build an app that carries that jar down to the riverbank. The app does not target the part of exam study that is about understanding. Exam candidates are already struggling every day to understand the material through lectures and textbooks. Understanding helps memory a great deal, but arbitrary lists of facts that can't be reasoned out, or don't need to be, are hard to remember by nature. And we sometimes reach understanding only by repeating the same material. Something understood with so much effort should not be left to slip away so easily.
Learning is the act of fetching water from the river and pouring it into a bottomless jar. That effort is the learner's share. It is a necessary condition of learning. But there is clearly a way to make the process easier.
A system is the form of the world, and what fills the world is people's will. If there is a better way, I believe the form should change, and I will keep refining a sharp solution for all of us.
Yeju Ji, Founder