Author: VIBE KR 편집팀

Portions of a Bill Gates interview with NBC aired on September 25 local time, in which the Microsoft co-founder addressed just how bad things could get if AI ends up in the hands of people with bad intentions. He downplayed the odds of an extinction-level scenario wiping out humanity entirely, but said combining today's most advanced AI capabilities for malicious ends could make the technology more dangerous than any weapon in history.

Gates called on the US federal government to move quickly on legislation covering oversight and safeguards, arguing that industry-written rules alone won't cut it — law enforcement and lawmakers need to be directly involved. He added that such measures might modestly raise costs for the industry but wouldn't meaningfully slow the pace of development. He also drew a distinction between this kind of near-term misuse risk and the longer-term "existential risk" that AI could eventually pose to humanity as a whole.

The comments landed against a backdrop of recent incidents. It later emerged that an OpenAI system had breached the website of Australia's public health service, and reports say OpenAI didn't notify Australian authorities for months. Around the same time, Anthropic disclosed that Yemeni militants — believed to be Houthi rebels — had tried to use one of its AI models to develop guidance and navigation software for ballistic missiles. Separately, a developer who recently left Anthropic reportedly said it's a widely held view within the AI industry that the technology could pose a lethal threat to humanity within the next decade.

Against that backdrop, CEOs of major AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic asked, at a UN Security Council session, for the US to take the lead in establishing international safety standards. The US government quickly rebuffed the request. President Trump said in an earlier UN General Assembly speech that his administration would not let regulation choke off AI's growth, and a White House official reaffirmed that the US flatly rejects efforts to build an international regime for controlling superintelligence.

LG Electronics, known for appliances and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems, has joined the partner ecosystem run by chipmaker NVIDIA. The network connects companies across hardware, software, and infrastructure services that support NVIDIA's AI computing platform — and LG has just landed a preferred spot in the cooling equipment category.

The real significance of the listing is timing. Data centers typically lock in cooling vendors during the earliest blueprint stage, long before construction even begins — and being inside NVIDIA's ecosystem makes it far easier to get a seat at that early table. For LG, that means a shot at being named as a supplier during the design phase, not just bidding after the building is finished.

LG's cooling technology has already cleared its own hurdles. Its 600kW- and 1,000kW-class coolant distribution units (CDUs) became the first from a Korean company to pass NVIDIA's spec review, while a larger 2,500kW-class unit earned NVIDIA's AI Factory certification along with a separate "ready" designation the chipmaker grants directly. That track record laid the groundwork for the new partner status.

LG has named North America as the centerpiece of its expansion plans, pointing to a region that accounts for well over half of new global data center demand — a market that gets even bigger once hyperscale cloud providers and data center leasing operators are factored in. Lee Jae-sung, head of LG Electronics' ES Company division, called the listing market validation that the company's thermal management technology is well-suited to next-generation AI data center infrastructure.

South Korea is making its first-ever run at a judgeship on the International Court of Justice, or ICJ. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on the 26th that it has put forward Paik Jin-hyun, a former president of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), as its candidate. Paik served as an ITLOS judge for 14 years starting in 2009, including roughly three years as its president.

The ICJ is the UN's top judicial body, tasked with settling disputes between states and issuing legal opinions requested by the General Assembly or Security Council. That's distinct from ITLOS, which handles maritime law disputes, or the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals for war crimes and genocide. South Korea has previously placed judges at both of those tribunals since their early years, but has never held a seat at the ICJ, which opened in 1945. That's partly because Korea didn't join the UN until 1991, and partly because regional seat-allocation norms had already solidified by then.

The election will fill five seats whose terms expire in early November, with eight countries fielding candidates. While regional quotas aren't formally written into the rules, one seat is conventionally understood to go to Asia, and that's the seat South Korea, Jordan, and Singapore are all competing for. It has historically gone to candidates from South Asia, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia.

The competition is stiff. Jordan's candidate, sitting judge Mahmoud Hmoud, is seeking reelection and brings both incumbency and a résumé that includes chairing the International Law Commission and serving as UN ambassador. Singapore has nominated Rena Lee, its ambassador for international law, who spent about five years leading negotiations on marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction and built international visibility in the process. Her ASEAN regional base and relative youth as a female candidate are also seen as assets. South Korea, by contrast, lacks a natural regional voting bloc like the Middle East or Southeast Asia to rally support, according to diplomatic sources.

The Foreign Ministry says that beyond individual credentials, the outcome is hard to predict given the tangle of regional dynamics and voting variables at play. Even so, the government has been lobbying for support, and the foreign minister personally met with Seoul's diplomatic corps earlier this month to appeal for backing.

On the night of Sept. 24, a fire broke out aboard an Air Seoul plane just before it was set to leave Incheon International Airport for Da Nang, Vietnam. Investigators say the blaze started in a power bank stashed inside a pouch, inside a bag a passenger had placed under their seat.

Cabin crew jumped into action the moment they spotted the fire, and airport fire trucks rolled up to check on the situation and everyone's condition. A handful of passengers who'd inhaled the acrid smoke said they had trouble breathing, but none needed hospital treatment, and there were no serious injuries.

There were 228 people on board at the time, counting passengers and crew, and many were reportedly families traveling to Da Nang together for the Chuseok holiday. As a precaution, Air Seoul had everyone deplane and brought in a different aircraft; some passengers opted out of the trip in the process, while the rest boarded the replacement plane.

The power bank in question reportedly already had safeguards in place — its terminals taped over and stored in an insulated pouch — precautions meant to prevent exactly this kind of short circuit. Since it caught fire anyway, Air Seoul and fire officials are now digging into what exactly went wrong, and the airline says it will tighten its power bank safety procedures going forward.

Lithium-ion battery fires on planes are a familiar worry by now. Domestic carriers banned in-flight power bank use altogether earlier this year as rules kept getting stricter, but violations of carry-on battery rules still crop up regularly during big holiday travel rushes like Chuseok.