파리 6구에 위치한 생제르맹데프레 교회에는 프랑스의 철학자, 수학자이자 과학자였던 르네 데카르트가 잠들어있다. 파리에 머물다 그 주변을 지날 때면, 나는 빠짐없이 생제르맹데프레에 들러 부속 예배실 한편에 놓인 그 무덤 앞에 서곤 한다. 근대학문 전반에 그가 끼친 영향은 가늠할 길 없이 크지만, 그의 고전적인 합리주의는 어떤 면에서 지금 21세기 현실과 더 치열하게 맞닿아 있는 것만 같다. 데카르트는 그의 책 방법서설에서 정신과 물질을 구분하는 실체이원론을 논하는 가운데, ‘인간’과 ‘기계’를 가르는 구분법을 제시했다. 그중 첫번째가 바로 ‘언어를 주어진 상황에 따라 적절하게 사용하는 능력’이다. 데카르트가 스웨덴에서 폐렴으로 생을 마감하고 삼백 년 뒤, 영국의 수학자이자 컴퓨터공학의 개척자였던 앨런 튜링이 인공지능의 충분조건으로 언어 모방게임을 제안했을 때, 그는 분명 데카르트의 글을 참고했을 것이다. 이제 놀랍도록 그럴듯한 글을 써내는 인공지능 챗봇이 연일 화제가 되는 이 시점에, 여러분은 이 데카르트의 주장이 마침내 기각됐고 따라서 인간과 기계 사이의 존재론적인 경계가 흐려지고 있다고 생각할 수도 있겠다. 아무것도 제대로 이해하지 못한 채로 그럴듯한 글을

POSTECH’s Freshmen Orientation (OT) was held from Feb. 12 to Feb. 16. The OT was conducted face-to-face for the first time in three years. On the first day of the OT on Feb. 12, the freshmen took a guided tour around the campus, including the CHANGeUP GROUND and the Mueunjae Memorial Hall with the Guide Team. Later in the evening, the freshmen met their classmates and seniors and enjoyed getting to know each other. On Feb. 13, starting with president Moo Hwan Kim’s welcome speech for Postechians, the freshmen learned about the Muenjae School of Undergraduate Studies, including a greeting from

Pohang City hosted a meeting at the POSTECH’s main conference room with major government officials to discuss the future establishment plans for POSTECH’s research-oriented medical science school. A number of high-ranking government officials including Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Lee Ju-ho, Mayor of Pohang Kang-deok Lee, Vice Governor for Administrative Affairs of Gyeongsangbuk-do Kim Hak-Hong, Member of the National Assembly Kim Byung-wook and President Moo Hwan Kim were among the attendees of the meeting. Citing the rapid development and social changes in various industri

Baseball is a special sport in the sense that there is a way to directly help the team while sacrificing oneself. As such, sacrifice is necessary when preventing the corrosion of metals. We can use sacrificial metal that is easily oxidized to prevent more important metals from corroding. Metals used in galvanizing processes, such as iron plates in street lamps or home appliances, are representative examples of important metals that need sacrificial metal. A technology that can solve the chronic problems in water electrolysis tanks for clean hydrogen has been proposed lately, drawing attention

Small-molecule drugs such as painkillers or digestive drugs are synthesized using chemical reactions. It is known that these small synthetic drugs need a drug-effective part called pharmacophore. However, introducing a pharmacophore into the drug molecule is limited because the overall synthetic procedures are complicated. Professor Lee Joongoo's research team (chb.postech.ac.kr) of the Department of Chemical Engineering (CE) conducted a joint study with Northwestern University and the University of Texas. The research team revealed a new fact that pharmacophores can be synthesized outside

On Feb. 8, Hyundai Card and Apple announced that they will introduce Apple Pay to Korea. Korea's mobile payment market is expected to undergo a major change. South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service announced on Feb. 3 that it is possible to introduce Apple Pay according to related procedures after reviewing whether Apple Pay services counter to local regulations and laws. As a result, experts expect that Apple Pay could be released in the first half of the year. According to business.com, mobile payment shares in the United States were in the order of Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Sam

In the early morning of Feb. 6, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked the calm brisk air of southeast Türkiye and northwest Syria. According to CNBC, the death toll surpassed 46,000 (still counting) with tens of thousands injured and displaced. The ongoing 12-year conflict in Syria and the outpouring of refugees as a consequence have made this disaster into a nightmare. After two weeks of searching for survivors buried under the collapsed buildings, rescue teams, and humanitarian workers are slowly shifting focus to rehabilitating the lost cities and providing food and shelter to the cities’ resid

This winter vacation, The Postech Times visited Vietnam and got an opportunity to explore Vietnamese universities. On Jan. 16, we visited VinUniversity, an innovative and new university located in Hanoi, Vietnam. VinUniversity is a prestigious, private, not-for-profit university founded by Vingroup with the mission to develop talents for the future. The university integrates the models of excellent universities, with the aim of making a breakthrough in Vietnamese higher education, and aspires to become a world-class university. At VinUniversity, we had the honor of interviewing Professor Laure

Tell us about your background and your main focus in research. I was a mathematics student during my undergraduate studies and then I went for my Ph.D to Stanford’s aerospace engineering. The specific research area I focus on can be broadly categorized as optimization which is a mathematical way to model a problem from the world where you have to make a decision or prediction. Mathematics is a field that can be applied to lots of real-life problems. I felt math was an opportunity for me to go into any field after my undergrad which is the reason why I choose to study it. I imagine you are hear

Are there any innovative or unique programs that you would like to introduce to us? I can share with you the philosophy of VinUniversity. The unique motto is “follow very high international standards, especially from the top universities in the world.” The first program is the Ph.D. in Computer Science. We focus on three domains. The first domain is smart healthcare which helps to give smart medical services to many people. The second domain is new materials development. The third one is on environmental intelligence. The second program is undergraduate research. We train undergraduate student

Please briefly introduce yourself. My name is Do Danh Cuong. I completed an undergraduate degree in electronic engineering at Vietnam National University, and then I received the privilege to study at a graduate school in Korea for 2 years in the Master Engineering program (MEng). That was a very big chance for me in a real academic institution because at that time there were not any real academic institutions in Vietnam. In Korea, a lot of people were focusing on research topics and trying to improve things. Then after two years, I went to the Republic of Ireland for a Ph.D. The main reason I

Introducing My Research I am majoring in financial economics. It studies how a financial deal is made, and how the specificity of financial trades, where general goods and services are distinguished, affects the efficiency of resource allocation. The most important function of financial markets is to promote the efficient allocation of funds and the attainment of added value by connecting creditors and debtors. I study policy designs that minimize the side effects of policy while preventing the financial crises that can occur due to uncertainties, so-called "information asymmetry," in which cr

Nowadays, being young in 2022, the public conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) was rekindled with the introduction of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. While natural language models are not a recent invention, the capabilities of ChatGPT surprised many. Notably, ChatGPT has passed US medical, law, and business school exams without any additional training; in The New York Times article conducting a “Turing test” of the AI, not even experts could distinguish between an AI-generated writing or a genuine human’s work with absolute certainty. But I am not writing this article

The 2022 Undergraduate Group Research Program (UGRP) was held From April 26, 2022, to Feb. 3, 2023. A team of three undergraduates or more study and research the fields they like for a year and have a chance to win an award. There are teams that develop an application or platform, teams that research AI models or blockchain, teams that make robots based on engineering skills, teams that do experiments regarding fundamental science, and teams that converge these fields. There are no limits. All POSTECH members including professors and graduates help undergraduates with their research. Undergrad

In January 2023, heating bills soared so high that all media outlets mentioned the issue of heating bills. According to the Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS), the price of residential natural gas increased from 15.5 KRW per 1 MJ of natural gas in January 2016 to 18.4 KRW in January 2023. Also, the price of industrial natural gas increased significantly from 14.1 KRW in January 2016 to 31.3 KRW in January 2023. Originally, industrial natural gas prices were cheaper than residential natural gas, but as industrial gas prices have risen since the second half of 2020, they have continued to be more exp

ChatGPT is a chatbot system developed by OpenAI and has been taking the world by storm lately as it can generate remarkably human-like responses to any topic of questions. ChatGPT is based on a large language model called Generative Pretrained Transformer also developed by OpenAI and is fine-tuned for human dialogue using reinforcement learning. The field of Artificial Intelligence is a relatively new-born field and has seen big success recently with the introduction of modern high-performance chips. Groundbreaking revolutions are common in this field as more than a hundred papers are publishe

Over the last few years, COVID-19 created a new culture of people wearing masks. Now, mask culture has settled down to be bothersome, but also somewhat comfortable. After Oct. 2020 when wearing masks was made mandatory, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) finally announced that starting from Jan. 30, 2022, they will loosen the rules and people no longer must wear masks. A lot of people, especially the young, were pleased with this news since masks had come with annoying features such as hindering communication and fogging up glasses. Even though a lot of people waited f

In modern society, new types of crimes appear every day and voice phishing is one of them. With voice phishing, the criminal usually makes up a story to keep the victim off guard and at some point requests private information regarding money. Victims sometimes fall for this bluffing. There are some people who sense the call is voice phishing and vent their anger at the criminal. Unfortunately, most criminals already know the target victim’s address and phone number. Often, they will take revenge by ordering food for delivery with a deferred payment. This is just one example of what can occur w

Amidst sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) existing in our life, people sometimes think about our future life with AI or robots. After Yang (2022) is a movie which features a family living with an android robot and how they accept the death of the robot. The family completely understood the perspective of the robot by looking into the memory of the robot. This story line implies how humans can embrace the viewpoint of AI or robots and coexist with them at last. Synopsis The film starts with Yang, who is the AI robot, also known as techno sapiens, taking a picture of the family. Yang was