Indo-Pacific Areas Face AI Risk Increase On Important Infrastructure

JAKARTA - The Indo-Pacific region is facing an increase in systemic vulnerability to critical infrastructure as artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly widespread in various sectors.

This finding was revealed in a report entitled Maintaining the Future: AI, Important Infrastructure, and Regulation Readiness in the Indo-Pacific Region' released today by Protostar Strategy in collaboration with the United States Chamber of Commerce in Australia, with the support of the Palo Alto Networks.

This report comes at a time when AI has become an integral part of the power system, transportation, emergency services, and various other essential services in the region.

Thus, AI is not just a promise of the future to bring benefits of efficiency and resilience, but also creates new risks such as data pollution, adversarial manipulation, and potential disruption of digital systems.

However, based on the results of a workshop with policymakers and industry leaders in four main countries Australia, India, Indonesia and Singapore, significant differences were found in the level of regulatory readiness and AI governance in each region.

Indonesia shows the dynamics of rapid private sector innovation, but exceeds existing governance capabilities, posing a risk of systemic dependence and vulnerability.

Australia has put forward a resilience-based approach, but does not yet have a framework that ensures the safety of overall AI use.

Meanwhile, India experienced rapid growth in AI adoption, but still faces challenges in the form of regulatory fragmentation and unequal institutional capacity.

Meanwhile, Singapore is considered the most proactive and adaptive country in implementing AI governance, and has the potential to become a reference model for other countries in the region.

Seeing the difference in readiness, this report emphasizes the importance of cross-sectoral and cross-border collaboration in dealing with new risks that arise from the implementation of AI in critical infrastructure.

The report recommends building a joint framework to ensure the safety and reliability of the AI system that can be adopted across sectors, as well as strengthening collaboration between the government and the private sector in sharing threatening information and improving responses to cyber incidents.

In addition, this report also encourages the use of regional platforms such as ASEAN and Quad to formulate safe, trustworthy AI approaches and standards, and support the resilience and openness of the digital market in the Indo-Pacific region.