A Deep Dive into Indonesia’s AI Development Plan
Support in 5 industrial sectors.
In August 2020, the Government of Indonesia launched its 2020–2045 development strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Government seeks to formulate the system with a holistic approach, benchmarking from several developed countries such as Germany and Singapore. The development plan is to envision AI in supporting five major industrial sectors; healthcare, education, bureaucratic reform, food security, and smart cities.
As a developing country, Indonesia has millions of opportunities for the implementation of AI. Not only could it increase business productivity, but AI could also encourage innovation in many sectors. By 2045, Indonesia is expected to be the 4th largest economy in the world, and AI plays a vital role in its realization. The utilization of AI could support many important industries in Indonesia. This challenging yet valuable plan is focusing on four key areas which are ethics and policy, talent development, infrastructure and data, and industrial research and innovation.
This article will elaborate on how Indonesia envisioned the utilization of AI in 2045.
AI for a Better Healthcare Services
Following our last article about Indonesia’s healthcare industry, the government is aware of the need to improve the country’s healthcare services to be more patient-oriented. To increase healthcare quality, the government is planning to implement the 4P of healthcare which are: Predictive, Preventive, Participative, and Personal. To implement the 4P of healthcare, a lot of data is needed from individuals, whether it is genetic data or other physical, sensory information.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of AI in healthcare. Many smart-hospitals, telemedicine applications, and the utilization of AI in healthcare services have grown significantly during this pandemic. There is a 1.5 times growth in website traffic of teleconsultation platforms as the government urges citizens to virtually visit their doctors (Galen Growth, 2020). An example of AI utilization is done by Indonesian startup, CekMata. They use AI and machine learning for the early detection of cataracts.
Not only is telemedicine, AI is also being implemented in hospitals. A number of big hospitals have started to implement the concept of ‘smart hospitals’ that is supported by AI utilization. One example is the National Hospital Surabaya that has worked with Singapore-based Bot MD to build a chatbot for doctors so they can assess thousands of journals, KPIs and therapies, and the hospital’s internal guidance on standards. They have also established an electronic medical record system (Hospital Insights Asia, 2020).
Online Education and R&D
One of the challenges in the implementation of AI is the lack of skillful human resources, and, therefore, education is essential. AI has a significant role in the future of education in Indonesia. Many applications of AI that could be used including intelligent online education, smart course content, virtual laboratory, adaptive learning system, precision learning systems, and so many others.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, students are obliged to learn from home. This accelerates the utilization of AI in the education sector. Currently, EdTech firms in Indonesia offer a wide variety of products and services, but less than 15% offer specific content that focuses on important lessons such as mathematics, science, and reading. To this day, there are a total of 171 EdTech startups that are continuously developing in Indonesia.
Other than education, AI is being utilized in the research and development sector. BINUS University, along with NVIDIA and Kinetica is going to establish the first AI R&D center in Indonesia. The R&D center will be the premier hub for AI in Indonesia and will showcase the commercial potential of the applications of AI.
Solving the Inequality in Government Services
As a democratic country with a population of more than 3,7 million has a highly centralized government administration. However, there has been an inequality of service in each region. With over 4 million civil service, it has been one of the challenges in reforming the administration (Carrington Malin, 2020). In their bureaucratic services, there is still a lack of digital implementation services.
To solve the bureaucratic problems, the government is planning on the implementation of AI. As promised by the President, Joko Widodo, the government will create a citizen-centric digitized services government. One of the strategies to implement the electronic service is by developing a national portal on e-service that includes all services provided by the central and local governments. It is targeted to be done by 2025 (GovInsider, 2020).
Maintaining the Stability of Food Supply and Demand
Indonesia is an agricultural country. However, the country has faced several challenges. The access to food is uneven, and there is an imbalance in supply and demand in each region caused by factors like poverty and infrastructure. Indonesia ranks 69th out of 113 for overall food security in The 2017 Global Food Security Index. Only 53% of Indonesian households have a high level of food security (Future Directions International, 2018).
AI is said to be a solution to these challenges. The food supply in each region can be monitored with AI. It can show the government which region requires supply so that there will be a balance on the supply and demand in each area. The systems needed for this are such as Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). LCI will act as a database for agriculture products, a straight-forward accounting of everything involved in the food system. Meanwhile, the LCA will analyze the inventory of agricultural products and their natural impact.
A Smart Urbanization
By 2045, approximately 70% of Indonesia’s population will be living in cities. A rapid shift of the people from rural areas to urban areas has become one of the keys that focuses on the utilization of AI to build smart cities and districts.
Urban management became more complex as the city required several support systems, such as the environment system, social system, economic system, energy system, healthcare system, and transportation system. One of them is the traffic which has become a significant problem in big cities, making human or goods mobility difficult and giving Indonesia an IDR 56 trillion loss per year. In 2017, the capital city, Jakarta’s traffic congestion ranks 12th in the worst congested cities in the world (The Jakarta Post, 2017).
In line with this vision, the government is planning to resolve the problem of mobility with AI. The government has introduced smart cities and is continuously developing it. The concept of smart cities focuses on how to combine urban development and ICT safely and effectively. The AI is to manage public assets and services such as waste management, transportation systems, and law enforcement (The Jakarta Post, 2019).
Indonesia has recently undergone several AI projects for smart cities. The Government has launched the initiative for its current capital city and other major cities, such as the Jakarta Smart City (JSC) and Bandung Smart City (BSC). The development is under the ‘Indonesia 100 Smart Cities Movement’.
The other utilization of AI for smart cities is the government’s plan of relocating the capital city from Jakarta to Borneo. The city will be designed based on AI technology and become one of the smart cities in Indonesia.
The Leading Country in AI Implementation in SEA
According to IDC Asia/Pacific Enterprise Cognitive/AI, Indonesia leads the ASEAN region in the implementation of AI. 24.6% of Indonesian organizations are implementing AI technology, while only 17.1% and 9.9% of organizations in Thailand and Singapore, respectively.
Many AI startups have existed in Indonesia. Although they have been developing throughout the decade, it was not until the pandemic hit that their potential started to be noticed (Techwire, 2020). There are 11 AI startups in total, namely Snapcart, Kata.ai, Nodeflux, Eureka.ai, and others.
Meanwhile, the adoption of AI in the e-commerce sector is led by e-commerce giants like Tokopedia and Bukalapak. A study found that Tokopedia was able to increase the total number of transactions by 202% and an increase in revenue by 179% month-over-month, after implementing AI-based product recommendations (The Jakarta Post, 2020).
Indonesian government is really supporting the development of AI to achieve the 2045 goals. The government, The Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Huawei, to develop the country’s digital ecosystem focusing on the development of AI, the cloud, and 5G technology. And in November 2020, Indonesia will organize an international level virtual conference and exhibition about AI, known as the Artificial Intelligence Summit 2020.
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