The Ubud Writer & Reader Festival (UWRF) positions itself at the forefront of global and regional discussion on artificial intelligence when its 2025 edition presents prominent writers to tackle the impacts of the technology in people’s lives.
At the festival, the discussion on artificial intelligence reached beyond the boundaries of technology, touching on questions of power, justice, and humanity. On a warm Thursday afternoon at the festival’s Alang-Alang Stage, Indonesian novelist and sociologist Okky Madasari and Canadian lawyer-anthropologist Petra Molnar sat together under the moderation of Australian foreign policy expert Lydia Khalil to unpack how AI is reshaping not only our world but also our sense of fairness.
The talk framed AI not as a neutral invention but as a mirror reflecting real-world imbalances—between those who create and those who consume, those with technological knowledge and those without, those who own capital and those left behind. Both panelists acknowledged that while AI has brought immense benefits, it continues to serve the interests of the powerful far more than those of the powerless.
“For me, just like any other form of technology, there is no such thing as neutrality when we talk about AI,” Okky told the packed discussion.
She argued that artificial intelligence is deeply shaped by those who design it, the data it learns from, and the purposes for which it is deployed. “AI, for instance, remains male-dominated and very much biased towards men,” she continued, noting that global systems, mostly developed in the United States, carry Western and often racial biases. She cited examples such as facial recognition tools that tend to associate criminality with men of Middle Eastern appearance or those wearing beards, revealing how prejudice becomes coded into supposedly objective systems.
Petra Molnar, who has long studied the intersection of migration and technology, added that AI has been increasingly weaponized against vulnerable groups. From refugee screening to border surveillance, she argued, algorithms too often replicate discrimination. “AI systems used for immigration purposes have been shown to unfairly target and exclude people based on race or nationality,” she said, calling for a global moratorium on AI in migration control until safeguards for fairness and accountability are established.
When the conversation turned to Indonesia, Okky’s remarks became a call to action.
She emphasized that Indonesia urgently needs a proper and fair legal framework to govern the use of AI, a law that protects citizens, supports innovation, and ensures that technological progress benefits everyone, not just the elite few. Her statement resonated strongly in a country that stands at the crossroads of a digital transformation. With a population of more than 280 million, around 40 percent of ASEAN’s total, Indonesia’s digital economy is projected to reach between US $210 billion and US $360 billion by 2030, with AI alone expected to contribute up to US $366 billion to GDP. Internet penetration has reached nearly 80 percent, meaning that more than 220 million Indonesians are now connected to the digital world.
Yet, despite this scale, most of the AI systems used in Indonesia are imported. The local industry remains primarily a consumer rather than a producer. This imbalance, Okky argued, reflects a deeper dependency, one that could be reduced if foreign companies operating in Indonesia were required to engage in genuine technology transfer.
Such transfer would allow Indonesian researchers, engineers, and developers to co-create rather than merely consume, helping the country build its own locally grounded AI ecosystem. “We must become producers, not only users,” Okky insisted.
Her statement came with a strong warning. Okky cautioned that without proper legal safeguards and democratic oversight, AI could easily become a new instrument of surveillance and control, particularly under the current administration of President Prabowo Subianto, warning that governments might use it to monitor, classify, and eventually silence citizens. “If there is no transparency and accountability, AI will not liberate us, it will control us.”
Her concern aligns with ongoing government efforts. The Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (Kominfo) has been drafting a national AI regulation since early 2025, aiming to harmonize a Presidential Regulation by the end of September this year. The draft involves feedback from over 400 stakeholders, including technology firms, universities, and civil society groups. Yet many observers worry that the law will come too late or be too weak to catch up with the rapidly expanding digital economy, whose gross merchandise value already reached US $90 billion in 2024, up 13 percent from the previous year.
For Okky, proper regulation is not enough. Data and public protection must go hand in hand with education, transparency, and inclusivity. In a society where gender gaps, rural-urban divides, and linguistic diversity remain wide, she warned that AI could easily reproduce old inequalities in new, digital forms.
Petra Molnar’s perspective echoed this worry. In her fieldwork, she has seen how the automation of decisions, whether in migration offices or welfare systems, often strips people of agency and dignity.
The conversation at UWRF captured a broader anxiety that stretches beyond literature: that AI, while promising to solve problems, could also deepen inequalities if left unchecked. It also offered hope, that with ethical awareness, inclusive policy, and local innovation, Indonesia could chart a different path. The country already has the talent: local firms like GoTo and Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison have begun developing Bahasa-based AI models such as Sahabat-AI, showing early signs of technological independence.
But to sustain such momentum, Okky argued, Indonesia must treat technology not merely as a market but as a field of sovereignty, signalling that literary and social discourse must engage with AI not as a remote tech issue, but as a deeply political, ethical, cultural one. Her three-point agenda: regulation, tech transfer, data protection aligns with Indonesia’s broader ambitions, and its challenges. For Indonesia to realise the promise of AI, and avoid the pitfalls, both legal frameworks and capacity-building must keep pace with technology’s advance.
