Microsoft: Indonesian AI Users Display Critical Thinking, Classified as Frontier Professionals

Microsoft’s 2026 Work Trend Index report reveals that 33% of workers using artificial intelligence in Indonesia fall into the ‘frontier professionals’ category, referring to users who utilise AI in a more mature manner. Senior Cloud and AI Platform GTM Microsoft ASEAN Fiki Setiyono explained during a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday that these Indonesian workers do not just use technology to solve complex tasks, but also create new ways of working with AI support without fully surrendering the decision-making process to the technology. ‘Instead, they use their critical thinking skills to get the best results from the AI agent’s capabilities, expanding their way of thinking and their thinking capacity,’ Fiki said. The number of AI users in Indonesia classified as frontier professionals is twice the global average of 16%. According to him, Indonesia is one of the standout countries in the Asia Pacific region for the utilisation of AI agents. Based on the research, 82% of respondents in Indonesia admitted they were able to complete tasks previously considered difficult or even impossible, a figure far higher than the global average of 58%. Furthermore, 74% of respondents stated they are accustomed to determining in advance which tasks to hand over to AI before starting work. Meanwhile, 38% of respondents admitted to still completing some work independently without AI assistance to keep their skills sharp, a higher percentage than the 28% recorded for non-frontier users in Indonesia. Microsoft also found that AI use among frontier professionals is no longer limited to giving commands or prompts to chatbots. Fiki explained there are four main patterns of AI utilisation: delegation, collaboration, questioning, and exploration. In the delegation stage, users hand over part of the task execution to an AI agent. In collaboration, AI is used as a partner to assist in the analysis and decision-making process. AI is also utilised as a research tool to search for information through a question-and-answer process and as an exploration partner when facing increasingly complex problems. Nevertheless, Fiki stressed that the main characteristic of frontier professionals is not only the ability to utilise these various AI functions, but also the willingness to remain responsible for the final results produced. ‘So frontier professionals, in addition to utilising AI with the available tools, they still position themselves as responsible for the results and the impact,’ Fiki said. According to Microsoft, the maturity of AI use in Indonesia is also evident from the strengthening role of human judgement in the technology utilisation process. As many as 62% of respondents assessed that critical thinking skills and the ability to analyse information objectively are becoming increasingly important in the AI era. Additionally, 60% of respondents stated that the quality control process for AI-generated results is now more crucial as the complexity of tasks delegated to AI agents increases. Other findings show that 93% of AI users in Indonesia consider the results provided by AI as a starting point, not a final decision. ‘AI users in Indonesia still place human judgement at the centre of their decisions on how they will use AI agents,’ Fiki said. He assessed that this approach is one of the main differentiators between merely adopting AI and achieving maturity in its utilisation.