Start-Up — When Artificial Intelligence meets Korean drama
By: Pathairush Seeda
Tags: Movies, Artificial Intelligence, Television, Technology, Kdrama

Spoiler alert: this article may contain information about this drama. Please feel free to skip it first if you have not watched it yet. But, if you don’t mind, let’s dive in!

Recently, I have watched the Netflix series called STARTUP. It’s a Korean drama that is on-air every SAT and SUN at 9 PM. The story is about a group of people who dream of establishing a startup business on their own.

Seem straightforward and not interested, right?

But, the exciting part is that the main character of this series is a

Artificial intelligence developer

To be honest, I have never seen any series before that put the context of artificial intelligence in romantic-drama shows.

As a data scientist, I thought this is incredible when I watched it for the first time. The writer and director decide to put the complicated thing like an AI into the drama.

The concept and basic illustration of what AI can do, but they also add technical words like deep learning, activation function, or loss function to the characters' conversation directly.

That made me has more impressed with this series. I’m not a geek guy that likes to see the technical word all the time, but to see it on national television is another story.

After watching ten episodes of this series (there is a total of 16 episodes, still on-air), I have learned so many things through this series, and here is what I condense from my thoughts.

AI in everyday life

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

I usually think that AI seems to be a buzz-word, and so many people out there have only a limited understanding of what AI can do.

It’s hard to reach a massive audience with complicated and technical terms. Even if you simplify the concept, it’s still difficult for some people to understand it.

Teach computers how to learn. Is that excited ? nah I don’t care about it anyways.

But, if you show them first with the end-product application, what it would be. That’s what this series demonstrated.

They bring the example of Object detection in computer vision combined with Voice recognition to show daily life usage.

The first daily life AI in the series is the robot-assistance called “Yong-sil.” The robot looks like a google nest that helps you with anything you are asking for.

With this assistance concept, the main character merges their computer vision technology to create the blind-assistance application called “Noon-gil.”

It’s a smartphone application that you can take a camera towards anything. The application will talk/describe what it sees in front of its camera so that blind people can understand and live their lives easier.

It’s a bit too fictional nowadays because we still don’t see any kind of application in the real world, but it is possible. I think the world already has those technologies in the research and development pipeline.

It depends on the time that some big giant techs will release this technology.

Practical data use cases

Photo by Product School on Unsplash

In the series, we witness a start-up development process. There is a place called Sandbox. The accelerating program helps early start-ups prepare and develop the prototype/demo of their own.

Also, It helps to broadcast the product to the Venture capital so that the startup can get the investment fund for further development.

The ideas spreading around the registration process of Sandbox are quite impressive. There are two main use cases represent here.

Hand-written fraud detection Font generated

If we are in the data science community, this is not something new. We have seen hand-written detection for a long time.

But, for those outsides of this society, it would be an eye-opener to the current technology. Can our application do something like this?

Besides, for the second use cases, If you look closely, it’s the concept of GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) to create new fonts based on the existing one.

Because I know what the technology behind these use cases is, That’s eye-opening for me.

The writer/director is up-to-date enough to put the latest cutting edge technology to the national television drama. It makes those people who are not familiar with technology can keep up with the new thing.

Also, they show these two use cases in the pitching session of the hackathon. That means there have to present a solid business model with technology to grapes the referees' attention.

It shows the value that can bring AI for the new business. It’s easier to convince people by the number rather than the word.

A representative of the strong country’s vision

Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

I have seen so many series/dramas equipped with technology like a hacker or computer genius. But I’ve never thought that I will see the artificial intelligence content in the national TV drama lately.

I admire how they put this complex topic into regular television to demonstrate their country’s vision about AI and startup.

Those growing-up children in Korea will see AI as a regular thing like a phone or application if they watch this series. They grow up with it.

As a result, It strengthens the technology foundation of the Korean people. The youth can choose to become developers like the main character because they know this position exists.

The benefit of knowing what is existed is huge.

The parent can support them with less hesitation because they already know what it is throughout the drama.

They have to do some more research, but it’s not that tough as knowing nothing about it. You already know what to look for.

2020 is in the information and technology era. You can see how many technology companies listed in the NASDAQ / USA index and how much each company’s value has.

It’s an essential thing for both developing and developed countries to adapt and encourage it. It’s the only way your country will be competitive in the world market shortly.

Otherwise, your country will be left behind.

And how you can make people aware of it. The drama could be the one of many answers.

A lot of people are watching dramas for relaxing typically. They watch it with their family. That’s a place we can add something informative here as the start-up series did.

They may not intend to see the drama because of the AI thing, but they still get a valuable information besides the love story and drama of the main character.

The children can raise the question about it, and their parents can teach them like a typical lesson in life.

That’s impactful to create a new technology-adapted generation.

In my country, Thailand, I have to elaborate on my job description every time I tell anyone I’m a data scientist. I make it short by saying that I analyze the data for a living.

It will be easier if we have a drama like a start-up in my country to make a massive group of people realize and understand the current technology.

Takeaways

Here are all at a glance.

Technology and AI are not difficult things to avoid.

Even the latest cutting edge technology can be simply put in the drama.

Solid use cases help better understanding for anyone.

The benefit of knowing what is existed is huge.

I hope that your country encourages this kind of drama to make a sustainable technology generation.

The technology and the process of startup establishing are well demonstrated in this series, highly recommended!

Don’t you think if we live in a world that artificial intelligence helps us in every step of your life?

How convenient it would be?

Pathairush Seeda

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