Working with NVIDIA and its partners, Indonesia's technology leaders have launched an initiative to bring sovereign AI to the nation's more than 277 million Indonesian speakers.The collaboration is grounded in a broad public-private partnership that reflects the nation's concept of gotong royong, a term describing a spirit of mutual assistance and community collaboration.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang joined Indonesia Minster for State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) President Director and CEO Vikram Sinha, GoTo CEO Patrick Walujo and other leaders in Jakarta to celebrate the launch of Sahabat-AI.
Sahabat-AI is a collection of open-source Indonesian large language models (LLMs) that local industries, government agencies, universities and research centers can use to create generative AI applications. Built with NVIDIA NeMo and NVIDIA NIM microservices, the models were launched today at Indonesia AI Day, a conference focused on enabling AI sovereignty and driving AI-driven digital independence in the country.
Built by Indonesians, for Indonesians, Sahabat-AI models understand local contexts and enable people to build generative AI services and applications in Bahasa Indonesian and various local languages. The models form the foundation of a collaborative effort to empower Indonesia through a locally developed, open-source LLM ecosystem.
Artificial intelligence will democratize technology. It is the great equalizer, said Huang. The technology is complicated but the benefit is not.
Sahabat-AI is not just a technological achievement, it embodies Indonesia's vision for a future where digital sovereignty and inclusivity go hand in hand, Sinha said. By creating an AI model that speaks our language and reflects our culture, we're empowering every Indonesian to harness advanced technology's potential. This initiative is a crucial step toward democratizing AI as a tool for growth, innovation and empowerment across our diverse society.
To accelerate this initiative, IOH - one of Indonesia's largest telecom and internet companies - earlier this year launched GPU Merdeka by Lintasarta, an NVIDIA-accelerated sovereign AI cloud. The GPU Merdeka cloud service operates at a BDx Indonesia AI data center powered by renewable energy.
Bolstered by the NVIDIA Cloud Partner program, IOH subsidiary Lintasarta built the high-performance AI cloud in less than three months, a feat that would've taken much longer without NVIDIA's technology infrastructure. The AI cloud is now driving transformation across energy, financial services, healthcare and other industries.
The NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) program provides Lintasarta with access to NVIDIA reference architectures - blueprints for building high-performance, scalable and secure data centers.
The program also offers technological and go-to-market support, access to the latest NVIDIA AI software and accelerated computing platforms, and opportunities to collaborate with NVIDIA's extensive ecosystem of industry partners. These partners include global systems integrators like Accenture and Tech Mahindra and software companies like GoTo and Hippocratic AI, each of which is working alongside IOH to boost the telco's sovereign AI initiatives.
Developing Industry-Specific Applications With Accenture Partnering with leading professional services company Accenture, IOH is developing applications for industry-specific use cases based on its new AI cloud, Sahabat-AI and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform.
NVIDIA CEO Huang joined Accenture CEO Julie Sweet in a fireside chat during Indonesia AI Day to discuss how the companies are supporting enterprise and industrial AI in Indonesia.
The collaboration taps into the Accenture AI Refinery platform to help Indonesian enterprises build AI solutions tailored for financial services, energy and other industries, while delivering sovereign data governance.
Initially focused on financial services, IOH's work with Accenture and NVIDIA technologies is delivering pre-built enterprise solutions that can help Indonesian banks more quickly harness AI.
With a modular architecture, these solutions can meet clients' needs wherever they are in their AI journeys, helping increase profitability, operational efficiency and sustainable growth.
Building the Indonesian LLM and Chatbot Services With Tech Mahindra Built with India-based global systems integrator Tech Mahindra, the Sahabat-AI LLMs power various AI services in Indonesia.
For example, Sahabat-AI enables IOH's AI chatbot to answer queries in the Indonesian language for various citizen and resident services. A person could ask about processes for updating their national identification card, as well as about tax rates, payment procedures, deductions and more.
The chatbot integrates with a broader citizen services platform Tech Mahindra and IOH are developing as part of the Indonesian government's sovereign AI initiative.
Indosat developed Sahabat-AI using the NVIDIA NeMo platform for developing customized LLMs. The team fine-tuned a version of the Llama 3 8B model, customizing it for Bahasa Indonesian using a diverse dataset tailored for effective communication with users.
To further optimize performance, Sahabat-AI uses NVIDIA NIM microservices, which have demonstrated up to 2.5x greater throughput compared with standard implementations. This improvement in processing efficiency allows for faster responses and more satisfying user experiences.
In addition, NVIDIA NeMo Guardrails open-source software orchestrates dialog management and helps ensure accuracy, appropriateness and security of the LLM-based chatbot.
Many other service capabilities tapping Sahabat-AI are also planned for development, including AI-powered healthcare services and other local applic
