Jakarta. In his March 2023 blog titled "The AI Age Has Begun", Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that whether we like it or not, discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) would dominate the public discourse for the foreseeable future. 

The generative AI chatbot ChatGPT launch on Sep. 30, 2022, has shifted AI from a technical business topic to everyone’s buzzword that keeps getting louder day after day.

According to online visibility management and content marketing firm Semrush, ChatGPT attracted 393 million monthly visitors as of Oct. 2024, a massive jump from just 1 million users five days after its launch. It makes ChatGPT one of the world's most visited websites, with 3.66 billion visits in October.

In the enterprise, IDC’s recent FutureScape report predicted that by 2025, 50 percent of enterprises would form strategic ties with cloud providers for GenAI platforms along with developer tools and infrastructure, which required new corporate controls for data and cost governance. 

According to Effendi Azmi Hashim, Managing Director of Kyndryl Malaysia and Indonesia, a public AI platform like ChatGPT is not the right choice for many businesses that want to integrate AI into their business operations but want to make sure that their data remains confidential.

Kyndryl is the world’s largest IT infrastructure services provider that offers infrastructure development for applications, data, and AI, as well as cloud, digital workplace, security, and resiliency, network, and edge, and Core enterprise and zCloud. In Indonesia, the company has been focusing on Cloud, Security, Data, and AI. 

Kyndryl’s most recent project in Indonesia was helping Barito Renewables, Indonesia’s largest geothermal energy producer and leading clean energy company, through its subsidiary, Star Energy Geothermal, migrate to a cloud-native environment to build generative AI into its operations. According to Kyndryl’s announcement, the company would integrate its AI-powered open integration platform, Kyndryl Bridge, to enhance the geothermal unit’s IT operations through advanced automation and AI operations (AIOps) capabilities. 

Effendi said that using an open AI platform like ChatGPT is risky for businesses since when we put information in ChatGPT, the information will go out to the world. 

"Can you imagine putting your financials or writing a legal or HR payroll letter into ChatGPT?” he said.

Kyndryl sees security as a key issue in implementing AI in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, where organizations have legacy or old IT systems not designed for modern security breaches. 

According to Felix Wira Putera, Head of Delivery, Kyndryl Indonesia, an organization that keeps legacy systems is like a home with open doors all the time. While businesses have been under pressure to adopt AI, those legacy systems on the back-end could hinder AI adoption.

That’s why Kyndryl emphasizes the importance of organizing the back-end part and the adoption of AI private cloud, which, according to Felix, could provide the capability of AI like in a public cloud but in a more controlled manner. Recently, Kyndryl, in collaboration with Dell Technologies using the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, launched a dedicated AI private cloud in Japan to help financial institutions, insurance providers, manufacturers, retail companies, and academics in the country confidently design and prepare to deploy innovative AI-powered solutions.

Kyndryl does not have AI products, but it helps clients build the foundation and platforms for AI, advises them on AI deployment, and provides security to the built AI infrastructure, according to Effendi. The company has hundreds of people in Indonesia who are ready to help businesses with AI adoption. For AI platform development, the company leverages Kyndryl Bridge, an observability platform that allows clients to see how AI is running in the data centers and across their systems.

Besides building infrastructure and providing security for AI, Kyndryl also helped clients organize their data and improve its quality. 

“Sometimes the data is scattered over the place, so we try to arrange it nicely so AI will work efficiently,” Felix said.

How will AI technology adoption by businesses look like in 2025? Kyndryl believes that generative AI will undergo another significant transformation next year, with some great use cases in the banking, energy and utilities, manufacturing, and telecommunications sectors.

In the banking sector, for example, generative AI use in the anti-money laundering space is expected to grow as firms apply the technology to identify suspicious activity and get ahead of bad actors more accurately. Meanwhile, the rise of AI investments and data center demand in the energy and utilities sector will drive energy companies to optimize power usage with AI and smart grid technologies. As AI-driven power consumption grows, these tools will enable real-time energy flow management, climate risk assessment, and improved grid stability. 

In manufacturing, enterprises will invest in 5G, Wi-Fi, and hybrid networks for seamless connectivity, enabling real-time data processing, edge computing, and integration to support generative AI while ensuring security. In telecommunications, firms will partner with AI leaders to integrate GPUs for faster edge processing, enabling low-latency streaming and real-time analytics.

Despite the fact that the limited supply of human resources with great AI skills is still an issue, Effendi is optimistic about AI adoption prospects in Indonesia since he sees some Indonesian universities have equipped students with technology skills around AI. 

“Indonesia is ahead of some of the other places I have seen since the country has excellent tailored university programs preparing for the AI generation,” he said.