Indonesia will publish in August its first national strategy on artificial intelligence in a bid to attract foreign investment, according to Reuters, quoting an official. The move follows neighbouring Malaysia’s push to establish itself as a regional hub for AI development, securing billions of dollars from global tech firms seeking to build critical infrastructure to meet growing demand for cloud and AI services.
Indonesia’s AI roadmap will be the first comprehensive AI document in the country, Deputy Minister of Communications and Digital Nezar Patria told Reuters in an interview at his office recently.
“The roadmap will help AI developers navigate (Indonesia’s market), including on infrastructure and also on computational clusters,” he said, adding that it would detail AI adoption in sectors such as health and agriculture.
“This will give an idea to investors about the potential of AI use in Indonesia,” he said. “We’re opening up to all global tech companies to get into the industry of AI development in Indonesia,” Nezar added.
An April report by Boston Consulting Group said ASEAN nations were positioned for substantial AI-driven gains, with GDP contributions ranging from 2.3% to 3.1% by 2027, and Indonesia projected to see the highest impact in terms of absolute gross domestic output growth.
But despite some investments, development has been slow in Indonesia compared to other parts of the region.
Damar Juniarto, an analyst from research centre PIKAT Demokrasi, which monitors AI safety in Indonesia, said the country was not ready to be an AI developer owing to a lack of infrastructure such as chips, and a lack of AI skills in the workforce.
Nezar said there remained risks of misinformation, intellectual property and data leaks. He did not detail how the roadmap would address those issues.
Nvidia was involved with Indonesia’s biggest tech company GoTo Gojek Tokopedia for a large language model service last year, and supplied its chips to the telecommunications company Indosat. Microsoft also said last year it would invest US$ 1.7 billion over the next few years into expanding cloud services and AI in Indonesia.
