Universitas Indonesia (UI) is collaborating with one of the country’s e-commerce giants for the Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence.
According to a recent press release, the Centre aims to encourage academics and researchers to use technology, especially AI, in presenting solutions to problems that occur in society and the industry.
The Goal of the Centre
Launched on 28 March 2019, the Centre will have researchers from the University developing AI-based solutions to address e-commerce industry problems in logistics, risk management, cybersecurity and payment.
In addition, researchers can also examine various ways in providing assistance to sellers in order for the sellers to create better products and offer effective services.
The University’s Chancellor, Prof. Dr. Ir. Muhammad Anis, M.Met., hoped that with the collaboration’s AI Centre of Excellence, they would be able to produce excellent graduates who are ready to compete at the global level.
With this kind of partnership, the spirit of innovation for the University’s academic community will be stimulated.
Stimulating them will therefore produce classy research findings that will progress the country’s economy to the next level.
Benefits of AI
The CEO of the e-commerce company, one of Indonesia’s Unicorns, said that they believe that technology should serve, not as a disruptor, but rather as an enabler that empowers people.
He reportedly shared that with AI, sellers can ship their goods within a day to customers on other islands.
AI will aid in demand prediction, smart warehouses and smart logistics.
The implementation of the AI technology in the various aspects of the e-commerce business helps the company in its mission to democratise commerce through technology.
The Centre is supported by a super computer technology, having the most optimised version of the most popular framework today.
It is equipped with the capability of training data four times faster than other GPU-based systems.
Road Ahead
The Indonesian Minister of Research, Technology and Higher Education Mohamad Nasir expressed his support for the Centre.
According to him, the AI development centre is expected to give birth to the best Indonesian children, who will be experts in the field of research and technology someday; capable of producing solutions to the future problems of the community.
This will address the issue of limited human resource capacity, which is a common problem for start-up communities in the country.
The company will be building more AI centres outside of Java to help guarantee equity in Indonesia’s economic and human resource development.
Their collaboration with the University will bridge academics and researchers, together with all stakeholders, in order to encourage research and development of AI for the empowerment and progress of the nation
