“Generative artificial intelligence (AI), which emerged 4–5 years ago, is expanding into agentic AI, AI DLC (downloadable content), and physical AI. It is entering the physical world from the digital realm.”
Ham Kee-ho, country managing director of AWS Korea, made these remarks at the ‘AWS Summit Seoul 2026’ held at COEX in Samseong-dong, Seoul on the 20th. He stated, “This year marks a special anniversary as Amazon Web Services (AWS) celebrates its 20th year.” He added, “AWS’s vision, established in 2006, that anyone with a credit card should have access to world-class technology, now provides over 240 services in 190 countries.”
Ham defined AI DLC as a new standard that does not merely assist in development but redesigns how organizations work with AI. He said, “AI is now changing the very approach to development, beyond being a coding tool,” and proposed, “AWS suggests a new methodology called AI DLC, where humans and AI collaborate throughout the software development lifecycle to design, develop, and verify together.” He continued, “AI is creating a new world where it coordinates development processes, proposes plans and architectures, while humans oversee, supervise, and make final decisions and take responsibility.”
Regarding physical AI, he noted, “South Korea is a country with a dynamic ecosystem across various industries, including AI chip design, robot foundation models, and robot manufacturing, all essential for physical AI.”
John Felton, AWS Chief Financial Officer (CFO), said in his keynote, “South Korea is not just a business location for AWS but a partner in shaping the future.” He added, “Since 2018, AWS has invested 12.6 trillion Korean won in South Korea, which has generated approximately 15 trillion Korean won in economic impact and trained over 300,000 talents equipped with AI product capabilities.”
Felton explained, “South Korea is one of the world’s most strategically important ecosystems today. You possess world-class infrastructure and connectivity, and a dynamic corporate ecosystem spanning semiconductors, manufacturing, and financial services. There are outstanding talents in engineering and research, and a government with the ambition to lead the AI era and advance the ‘AI Highway’ vision.”
Jason Bennett, AWS Vice President of Global Startups, stated, “Agents are completely reshaping how we build software.” He continued, “AI-based software development tools have rapidly evolved over the past year, from inline tab auto-completion to writing entire functions and completing multi-step tasks.”
Mentioning AWS’s coding assistant Kiho, Bennett said, “We aimed to bring the exciting aspects of AI-based software development while adding the structure developers truly need.” He added, “Through Kiho, we were able to release more code in the past five months than in the previous decade.” Regarding Amazon Quick, which redesigns daily tasks, he said, “When considering how time is spent at work, one might spend hours daily on tasks that do not require their expertise, such as searching, summarizing, and context switching. This is why we created Amazon Quick.”
Upstage CEO Kim Sung-hun presented on the topic ‘The Era of Autonomous and Procedural Agents: What Should We Prepare For?’ He stated, “While individuals use many AI agents personally, manual tasks still dominate in actual corporate workflows.” He explained, “Companies cannot immediately adopt agents because procedures are critical. Work must be reproducible, explainable, and correctable if errors occur, hence the importance of procedures.”
Kim added, “Upstage focuses on procedural agents because we believe they can be quickly adopted by enterprises.” He mentioned Upstage Studio and said, “We believe procedural and task-oriented agents will increasingly integrate. Upstage wants to embark on this journey with you, starting from procedural agents toward autonomous agents.”
Originally written by: Ahn Sang-hee
Source: The Chosun Daily
Published on: 20 May 2026
Link to original article: AWS Celebrates 20th Anniversary, Highlights AI’s Shift to Physical World
