To celebrate the ICA Indonesia Chapter 1st Anniversary, the Chapter organized a day of webinars on March 7th, 2024, with founders, members, affiliates, and other country chapters on Artificial Intelligence and Sustainability. AI has the potential to address major societal problems, including sustainability.
In the opening remarks from the Indonesia Chapter Chair, Prof. Dorien Kartikawangi, M.Si stated that although the chapter is only a year old, it has conducted and partnered with three main events and has close to 100 members. As the first chapter of ICA, there was initially pressure to ensure it could attract Indonesians' interest. But now, international exposure has been a value-added benefit for members.
The events were substantially intriguing in discussing the state of sustainability through AI implementation. The first panel, moderated by Loina Perangin-angin of Swiss-German University, featured a discussion with Prof. Dr. Daniel Raichvarg (ICA France Chapter and Emeritus Professor, Bourgogne U), Riza Primahendra (Strategy and Sustainability Management Specialist, Amerta Consulting), and Dr. Nia Sarinastiti, M.A. (ICA Indonesia Chapter, Sustainability and Circular Economy Consultant and Atma Jaya Catholic U of Indonesia). It focused on how AI can be an advantage for organizations in communicating businesses' value propositions. Helping make operational aspects and decision-making easier provides a better opportunity for human interaction - with communities, patients, and other stakeholders.
Panelists at the Inter-ICA Regional Chapter session, with representatives from Indonesia, Nigeria, and France, agreed that all countries - developed, emerging, and developing - face the same challenges regarding how AI can be adopted to help in education. People are still a bit wary of dealing with AI as an "assistant" or "new professional" therefore, the debate of human versus machine may take some time to resolve.
Ekaete George - the ICA Chapter Lead of Nigeria - stated that AI has started to be used in Africa, but not all of it is at the same stage. Nigeria is still evolving compared to Egypt and Mauritius, which have a national policy and framework. AI is still developing and managed by the Ministry of Communication, Innovation, and Digital Economy through the National Information Technology Development Agency. Philippe Bonfils of the ICA Chapter in France and from Toulon U - shared how education research is being done in AI involving students. These include developing an immersive environment for simulations. An example is an electronic and digital environment for apprenticeship learning that evaluates using data and AI in the naval industries. Bonfils further emphasized the current research regarding immersive user experience, behavioral simulation implementation, and AI integration with learner data, code engine, and output solutions. Bonfils, underscored the importance for educators to develop hard skills and improve mass education, increase open database resources, adapt education content for mobile ability, and improve interactive systems for student involvement. But again, ethics, rules, and transparency need to be considered.
Indonesia's Sri Hastarjo, who moderated the session, stated that the first application of AI in Indonesia is to interact with customers using chatbots, especially using women's voices rather than men's. The second development is on content creation, especially in producing scientific or journalistic work, but the question of ethics persists on originality.
At the last session on Ethical AI and Regulations, the Secretary of the Director General on Technology Application at the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, Dr. Ir. I Nyoman Adhiarna, M.Eng and Professor Noshir Contractor, Ph.D - Former ICA President agreed for the need to focus on ethics in addition to regulations. Moderated by Yearry Setianto (ICA Member and Lecturer at U Multimedia Nusantara), Adhiarna stated that regulations on AI are not the current target, but understanding the implications of AI is the highest concern. Contractor shared the current research on the application of AI to accelerate innovation, scaling up global health solutions, and preparing for human space missions to Mars. The examples imply the importance of how human-AI teams can capitalize on the best of human and machine intelligence in which AI can augment human capabilities and interactions within a team.
Overall, the celebration had approximately 80 people joining at each session, with interactions between speakers and participants.