Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto has urged the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to increase and strengthen cooperation for developing artificial intelligence (IAI) technology to usher in business efficiency.

Cooperation will enable the region not only to manage opportunities and challenges arising from AI but to also strengthen stability and achieve regional prosperity using the digital roadmap in the upcoming years, he said in a statement released on Thursday.

“In the past few years, one of the fastest-growing technologies for practical purposes has been AI,” he said at the online ASEAN Workshop on the 4th Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution 4.0 has the potential to raise global income and improve the quality of people’s lives worldwide, Hartarto said.

Technology has created new products and services to improve efficiency and provide comfort, he said.

According to the minister, AI makes it possible for a machine to perform duties that usually need human intelligence. Hence, it has been empowered and adopted widely in various applications, ranging from simple daily tasks, intelligent assistants, finance, specific orders, operation control, to national security.

It is hoped that the use of AI will improve business efficiency, increase productivity, encourage innovations in various sectors, and answer national and regional development problems, including post-COVID-19 pandemic economic recovery, creation of new jobs outside the manufacturing sector such as the logistics supply chain, service centers, and research, he added.

A survey conducted by Kearney and EDBI (2020) has predicted that AI can have a comprehensive and strong impact, including bringing about an increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) of 10 percent to 18 percent across Southeast Asia by 2030.

Source: Antara News