Indonesia has a huge of Artificial Intelligence Industry (AI) potential, with some 26.7 million workers benefiting from AI technology.
“There are approximately 26.7 million workers in Indonesia using this AI technology. Indonesia is also ranked second in Southeast Asia after Singapore in terms of AI
funding in the 2022-2023 period with a total investment of US$7.5 billion,” Deputy Minister of Communication and Informatics, Nezar Patria, said on Monday, May 6, 2024.
However, he said, the presence of AI also brings a number of challenges including issues on the spread of disinformation, misinformation, mal-information generated by AI as ell as threat of loss of a number of jobs due to AI automation.
Beside those issues, there is also an issue of how to use AI, generating the need to organize special training on how to use general AI and make prompting. As It turns out, the creation of prompt greatly determines the effectiveness of the General AI.
With regard to mitigating the risks of arbitrary prompting, Nezar said, Indonesia must use this AI to encourage economic growth and national progress. He cited that in 1996, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Robert Solow, introduced two models of economic growth to encourage the progress of a nation. The first is cutting edge growth, which means economic growth is created through creation and development. The second approach, which is a copy-and-paste growth or economic growth through the development and adaptation of existing ideas, is practiced in China and India.
He suggested that this copy-and-paste growth model is one of the options for Indonesia to encourage national economic growth.
“By adapting existing innovations, Indonesia has the potential to increase its role as an AI developer country at the global level, not just a user,” he said.
Suppport for transfer of knowledge and transfer of technology was among others displayed by Microsoft CEO Satyana Dilan, who announced Microsoft’s investment plan in Indonesia through the development of AI infrastructure and cloud or early computing as well as AI upskilling for 840 thousand participants and program support for 10 thousand developers.
“I think this is such an extraordinary support from Microsoft. We hope that Microsoft can also develop a research and development center with holistic features in Indonesia.” Nezar said.
