Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are happening quickly. Anthropic's recent Mythos model is so proficient at discovering security flaws in code that it is being restricted to a handful of companies, along with the U.S. and U.K. governments, before being released more widely. While this raises questions about the future of cybersecurity, the ability of AI to conduct tasks more quickly and, in some cases, better than humans raises questions about how labor will coexist with AI in the workplace.This is already beginning to come to a head in Korea. Park Sang-man, the head of the Korean Metal Workers' Union (KMWU), is pushing for workers to be at the table as companies integrate AI into the workplace. He argues that he’s not against new technology, but that it should be used to reduce dangerous tasks rather than replace workers.One of the proximate causes driving KMWU’s concerns is Hyundai Motor Group’s interest in bringing AI-enabled robots onto the factory floor. Earlier this year, Hyundai unveiled the latest version of its Atlas humanoid robot. This AI-enabled version can be run continuously by replacing its battery, has increased strength and dexterity, and its interconnected AI allows it to transmit a skill learned by one robot to the rest.Hyundai plans to mass produce the Atlas robot and deploy it at its new Metaplant in the United States. The concern is that if successfully deployed in the United States, Hyundai will utilize Atlas to reduce its labor force in Korea.Getting the balance of AI and labor in the economy right will be critical for Korea’s long-term economic success. Korean firms already face increasing competition from China and AI will only intensify that competition. China has taken a practical approach to AI, working to integrate it into applied applications as quickly as possible. This includes the automation of factories.Some increased automation coupled with job losses will be inevitable. Elon Musk has argued that AI will eventually replace all workers. Not all AI experts and heads of tech companies view the challenge as that extreme, but there is a broad consensus that there will be significant displacement of workers due to AI.The question for the Korean government, companies and workers is whether AI will merely replace humans or enhance the ability of workers to perform some existing tasks or create new, higher skilled jobs for humans as AI takes on more manual labor. The focus should be on ensuring that AI enhances workers’ capabilities rather than using it to replace workers. If the latter approach is taken, the risk becomes that significant job losses create social instability domestically and undermines Korean corporate competitiveness.One difficulty is that AI is often designed for replacing human labor than enhancing it. When ChatGPT first broke out, it was touted as a way for executives to replace their assistants. Current versions of AI are designed to develop agents that work on tasks continuously. For research into new medicines or industrial technologies, this will bring significant benefits, but for many tasks, it will likely replace rather than enhance workers’ skills.While there may be short-term competitive advantages to replacing human labor with AI, companies and governments need to think through the long-term implications. One area where AI is most able to replace human labor is coding, as Mythos is demonstrating. That has allowed firms to reduce the need for entry level coders.Companies, however, need critical thinking, something AI cannot provide. Firefox was one of the companies given access to Mythos. It reports that the program is better than humans in finding coding errors, but that human understanding is still needed to properly patch software flaws.But there are downsides to eliminating young coders and turning initial code writing over to AI. As firms move to just maintaining highly skilled coders, new workers won’t be trained to manage these or future problems. While this mid- to long-term knowledge gap may appear unique to coding, other industries have also reported that AI generated work is not well retained by employees. As more work is turned over to AI, there is a risk that younger workers do not gain the skills they need when they move into higher level positions or lose out on job opportunities altogether.This isn’t just a corporate issue for Korea. Youth unemployment in March 2026 was at 7.6 percent, the highest in five years. If AI adoption further limits economic opportunities for young Koreans, it could increase social instability.While the Youth New Deal can be part of the solution, it may be too narrow in scope to deal with the potential disruptions. Government should be working with companies to find solutions to the questions that AI raises for employment, social stability and economic competitiveness. More specifically, how will the private sector maintain a highly skilled workforce if it replaces an increasing number of positions with AI.Troy Stangarone is the director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy and the deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.