COVID-19 Underscores the Benefits of South Korea's Artificial Intelligence Push

The novel coronavirus is the most significant public health and economic risk that the world has faced in nearly a century. It has infected more than 65 million people and killed more than 1.5 million. The economic damage from the disruption is expected to be the worst decline in global GDP since the Great Depression. Facing a new public health and economic crisis South Korea utilized lessons from its recent experience dealing with the MERS outbreak of 2015, but also integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into its response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In early January the coronavirus was largely contained to China.