At the Google Cloud Jakarta Summit 2023, Google Cloud unveiled new solutions and resources that are now available to organizations of all sizes in Indonesia to help them innovate with artificial intelligence (AI) quickly, securely, and responsibly. Google Cloud also spotlighted collaborations with leading Indonesian companies that are leveraging AI to tackle issues that matter to Indonesians and underserved segments.
Nurturing Skilled Talent for the AI Economy
To make career paths in generative AI more accessible to individuals, Google Cloud is making seven new generative AI skills development courses available at no cost under its Cloud Skills Boost Program. This new learning path helps learners understand the difference between generative AI and other types of AI, how to customize pre-trained generative AI models for use in applications, how to apply AI responsibly, and more. After acquiring foundational skills in generative AI, learners can pursue other machine learning (ML) and data science learning paths or industry-recognized IT certifications through the Cloud Skills Boost platform. Indonesians can now seize the opportunity to build and demonstrate their proficiency in in-demand cloud AI skills to prospective employers.
Supercharging Enterprise Adoption of Generative AI
In the past four months, Google Cloud has introduced a number of technologies to make new levels of innovation possible with generative AI. Today, Google Cloud announced the general availability of Generative AI support on Vertex AI to help organizations accelerate their AI journeys.
This consists of a Model Garden that gives enterprisesâ data scientists and AI practitioners access to pre-trained generative AI models, and Generative AI Studio to help them customize these models and quickly embed them into internal or consumer-facing applications and websites. The Model Garden hosts over 60 models from Google and its partners. This includes models for summarizing and translating text in multiple languages, maintaining an ongoing conversation, turning audio into text, creating studio-grade images from text descriptions, and generating and fixing software code.
Google rigorously evaluates its models to ensure they meet its Responsible AI Principles. When using Vertex AI, customers retain complete control over their data: it does not need to leave the customerâs cloud tenant, is encrypted both in transit and at rest, and is not shared or used to train Google models.Â
Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Bank BRI), for instance, has been an early adopter of Google Cloudâs Vertex AI platform. The bankâs innovative use of Vision API (application programming interface) has allowed it to integrate securely with the Indonesian government ID database, enabling the identities of new customersâwhether they are coming in via a branch, a BRI Link Agent, or its mobile appâto be automatically verified in seconds through Optical Character Recognition. With instant credit scoring and identity fraud concerns essentially eliminated, the bank can make more confident lending decisions. Bank BRI is now exploring the potential use of Google Cloudâs generative AI solutions to improve its chatbot, boost employee productivity, and automate content creation.
Accelerating the Growth of Homegrown AI Startups
In a world where cutting-edge innovation is essential, Google Cloud continues to be a trusted partner for startups. 70% of the worldâs top 100 unicornsâincluding GoTo Group, Kopi Kenangan, and Travelokaâhave turned to Google Cloud for industry-leading cloud analytics, AI, and ML capabilities to scale quickly and pioneer new industries.
With technical advisory and implementation support from Devoteam, a Google Cloud partner, Aruna, an integrated fisheries commerce and supply chain aggregator in Indonesia, has been building and running its digital ecosystem on Google Cloud, enabling more than 39,000 local fishermen to increase their income by 3 to 12 times. Having integrated GPS data from fishing boats with Google Earth Engine to verify that these fishermen are also fishing within permitted areas, Aruna now aims to apply ML to understand how variables like weather and fishing effort can affect fishermen’s earnings, so it can recommend ways for them to improve their performance.
KoinWorks, a neo bank in Indonesia, is also collaborating with Google Cloud and Devoteam to apply cloud analytics and AI to mimic the know-your-customer and know-your-business checks that banks do. Where collateralized lending has hampered micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) ability to secure the loans they need to grow their businesses, KoinWorksâ internal credit scoring model combines MSMEsâ transaction data, warehouse inventory data, Google Business Profile data, and other data sources, to help these MSMEs underwrite and secure loans.
To support more seed to Series A startups in Indonesia who use AI as the core technology to develop primary products or solutions, the Google for AI Startups Cloud Program is now available to cover their cloud costs of up to US$350,000 over two years. For pre-seed AI-first startups, the Program provides up to US$2,000 in free cloud credits to help fund their development of proofs-of-concept and showcase their products to prospective investors and customers.
Megawaty Khie, Regional Director, Indonesia and Malaysia, Google Cloud, said: âAI, and generative AI, in particular, will have a profound impact on community and commerce. Bank BRI, Aruna, and KoinWorks are already serving as strong examples of how these technologies can be responsibly applied to reshape digital service delivery and unlock new opportunities for Indonesians. By making new skilling courses, pre-trained models, developer-friendly tools, and startup support available in Indonesia, Google Cloud is reinforcing its commitment to empowering organizations of all sizes to deploy generative AI with ease and speed, while protecting their data, applications, and users.â
