Seoul is pushing a plan to give 500,000 young residents free access to high-performance artificial intelligence services for one year starting next year. Along with the access vouchers, the city plans to improve participants' AI skills by linking customized assignments, AI-assisted feedback, tiered training and expert mentoring. Progress is expected to be difficult, however, after the Seoul Metropolitan Council cut the entire related supplementary budget last month and price talks with AI service providers hit a snag.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government disclosed the detailed implementation plan at an open talk on the Youth AI Growth Support pilot program held at City Hall on the morning of the 27th. The plan fleshes out the Youth AI Ladder policy the city announced in July, reflecting input from young people, universities and companies.
The program focuses on more than simply handing out AI access, aiming to help young people use AI directly for study, job hunting and starting businesses. Participants must choose at least one assignment a year and solve it using AI. Typical examples include organizing study materials, improving cover letters, analyzing and automating work data, and building prototypes of products and services. After completing an assignment, participants receive feedback on their work and customized training through an AI feedback agent.
The AI training runs in tiers, from basic to advanced. All participants receive online instruction and practice, while offline courses range from writing AI prompts and verifying answers at the basic level to data analysis and work automation at the intermediate level and app and web service development at the advanced level. Those who want more can also be connected to advanced programs such as expert mentoring, joint projects with companies and hackathons.
Vouchers will go first to young people in socially disadvantaged circumstances, including recipients of basic livelihood benefits, the near-poor, young people with disabilities and young people preparing to live independently after leaving state care, with the rest distributed to other young residents. The city will also run a beginner-friendly AI mentoring program for young people unfamiliar with using AI. To prevent personal data leaks and misuse of AI, ethics training will be mandatory, and the city plans to state in its contracts with providers that usage data will not be used to train AI models.
The program was designed around actual demand from young people. In two surveys of 14,215 people aged 19 to 39 conducted by the city from August to October, 85.1% said they intended to take part. In the second survey, 48.7% of respondents were not paying for an AI subscription, and 75.4% cited the cost burden as a reason for not subscribing, in a multiple-response question.
Securing the budget is the key issue. The city allocated 5.63 billion won ($3.9 million) in its second supplementary budget this year for the pilot program, but the council cut the entire amount last month, citing insufficient detail in the plan. The city plans to include the funding in next year's main budget and launch the program in January.
At the briefing, Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon spoke of the difficulties posed by the opposition-controlled council and the supplementary budget cut, saying, "It is truly regrettable that it has not gone as intended." He added: "We brought the price down to $2.5 per person with OpenAI and Gemini, but because the supplementary budget did not pass, we could not keep our promise, and we have now received feedback that they can no longer provide it at that price. We are continuing negotiations, but talks are not going easily in the direction we want."
"If the council says no, then it cannot be done, and if we ask again and are refused, there is no other way," Oh said. "But if next year's budget bill passes, we are preparing so that we can carry it out right away from January."