Filipino workers are ready for AI – but are businesses? ASUS Co-CEO Samson Hu weighs in

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

MANILA, Philippines — Walk into any coworking space in Bonifacio Global City or Makati City, and chances are you'll find a workforce increasingly embracing artificial intelligence (AI)—from marketers generating copy with ChatGPT and professionals transcribing meetings using AI-powered tools to executives drafting emails with Gemini.

There is little doubt that individual Filipino workers have embraced AI at a remarkable pace. But look beyond individual browsers and into the country's largest enterprises, and a paradox is noticeable.

According to industry data by Cisco, despite immense local enthusiasm, only 22% of enterprises in the Philippines are deemed "AI-ready."

It's a gap that ASUS Co-CEO Samson Hu discussed in an exclusive interview with Philstar.com during the Philippine launch of the flagship ASUS ExpertBook Ultra, where he shared his perspective on what's holding enterprises back from scaling AI.

Hu pointed to a growing gap between employee enthusiasm for AI and an organization's ability to support its widespread adoption.

“The challenge is not lack of workforce talent or interest. The challenge is quite about the organizational readiness, how to move AI from the experimentation stage to really enterprise-wide discussion,” Hu told Philstar.com

Employees are ready. Organizations aren't.

Hu, with a deep engineering background, views the enterprise AI gap as an organizational and structural bottleneck rather than a technological one.

According to him, while an individual can integrate an AI tool into their personal routine in five minutes, an enterprise faces a radically different challenge. For a company to safely deploy AI at scale, it must navigate the friction of data governance, security policies, systemic risk and architectural integration.

The disconnect, he argues, stems from a common misconception. Many executives still treat AI as a simple software acquisition, with conversations often revolving around AI models, subscriptions, and cloud platforms. As Hu expressed, many companies mistakenly assume AI adoption simply means purchasing new software licenses or giving employees access to AI tools.

Instead, he believes the companies seeing the greatest returns are those that embed AI into the way work gets done.

“The organizations that create the most value from AI are not those with the most tools," he said. "They are the organizations that integrate AI into how people actually work."

This philosophy underpins ASUS' broader vision for enterprise AI. Rather than viewing AI as a technology initiative, the company believes businesses should treat it as a broader transformation initiative.

AI success requires more than software

For ASUS, successful enterprise AI adoption hinges on three essentials that move AI from an isolated IT experiment into a core driver of business transformation: the right tools, the right devices, and the right workflows.

The first pillar, the right tools, refers to the AI applications and software that have fueled today's AI boom. These are the large language models, copilots and productivity platforms that excite business leaders for their ability to automate routine tasks, generate content, analyze data, and accelerate decision-making.

But software alone isn't enough.

Beyond software, Hu said businesses must also redesign workflows so AI becomes embedded into everyday operations rather than treated as a standalone productivity tool. 

For ASUS, that means integrating AI directly into the business laptop through features in its ASUS MyExpert Suite. 

AI ExpertMeet, for example, automatically transcribes and summarizes meetings; while Knowledge Hub, which enables AI-powered semantic search across enterprise files. AI ExpertPanel provides on-device AI capabilities—all designed to make AI a natural part of employees' daily workflows.

The third pillar, the right devices, is perhaps the most overlooked. 

While discussions around enterprise AI often focus on cloud platforms and software subscriptions, Hu argues that the physical hardware powering AI experiences is just as critical. 

AI-ready devices equipped with dedicated processing capabilities enable organizations to run increasingly complex AI workloads more efficiently while supporting security, responsiveness, and on-device AI experiences.

Devices built for the AI era

The need for devices built for the AI era is often overlooked in the enterprise AI conversation—one that tends to focus almost exclusively on software models and cloud platforms. 

Unlike traditional office applications, AI workloads require significantly greater computing power, performing billions of mathematical operations simultaneously. It is this gap that ASUS hopes to address with the launch of the new ASUS ExpertBook Ultra in the Philippines.

The challenge is particularly evident in the local market. Cisco's 2024 AI Readiness Index found that only 22% of Philippine organizations have the graphics processing unit (GPU) capacity needed to support current and future AI workloads. 

At the same time, just 45% of enterprises have implemented key safeguards—including end-to-end encryption, security audits, continuous monitoring and rapid threat response—to adequately protect data used in AI systems.

"AI is a full-stack transformation," Hu explained.

In other words, investing in AI software while equipping employees with legacy hardware creates a bottleneck. Without devices capable of handling modern AI workloads, organizations are unable to fully unlock the performance, responsiveness and security that enterprise AI promises.

This is where ASUS positions the new ASUS ExpertBook Ultra. Equipped with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) of up to 50 TOPS, the device is built for what Hu describes as Hybrid AI—an approach that distributes AI workloads between the cloud and the device itself. 

Processing AI tasks locally not only improves responsiveness and reduces reliance on cloud computing but also enables sensitive business information to remain on the device whenever possible.

For enterprises handling confidential financial records, customer information, proprietary documents and internal communications, that distinction is increasingly important. 

Rather than transmitting sensitive data to public cloud AI services, businesses can process more workloads locally, strengthening privacy while reducing the risk of potentially catastrophic data leaks.

Hu also said durability remains a key pillar of enterprise computing. Despite its ultra-slim design, the ASUS ExpertBook Ultra is engineered to withstand the demands of daily business use, helping organizations maintain productivity and business continuity through reliable, long-lasting devices

For ASUS, enterprise devices equipped with dedicated AI processing capabilities, durability, and enterprise-grade security are no longer optional upgrades but necessities that enable organizations to balance productivity with stronger data protection.

"What professionals need is a device that truly deserves to be their work machine—secure, durable, and ready for more advanced workloads. That is the role we want ExpertBook to play,” Hu said. 

“A device like the ExpertBook Ultra that is thin and light, durable, secure, and ready for AI is not a luxury in that environment. It helps people do more with less friction. So for us, this is the right time to invest—because long-term value matters even more when the market is cautious,” he added. 

Philippines in ASUS' AI roadmap

Hu's visit to Manila—his first official visit to the Philippines in more than a decade—comes as ASUS deepens its enterprise AI ambitions in the country.

For the company, the Philippines represents more than another market for AI-powered laptops. Hu points to the country's accelerating digital transformation, growing pool of digitally skilled Filipino professionals, and increasing appetite for AI as reasons why ASUS sees long-term opportunities locally.

But he also acknowledges that AI adoption is far from a finished story.

"We not only think about today's business operations," Hu said. "We think ahead for tomorrow, for the future."

That forward-looking approach is reflected in ASUS' "Ubiquitous AI. Incredible Possibilities." strategy, which centers on anticipating the next wave of AI innovation and ensuring its devices are ready to support whatever comes next.

That future, he believes, will continue to evolve well beyond today's generative AI boom.

"AI will keep evolving," he said. "Today we have generative AI, we have agentic AI. In the future, it will evolve into something we don't know yet."

For ASUS, that uncertainty is precisely why the company is focusing less on chasing individual AI trends but more on building a technology foundation that can adapt alongside them.

"We always keep in mind what's next for AI," Hu said. "We are passionate about technology, and we always emphasize meaningful innovation for AI users."

Whether AI's next chapter is defined by increasingly autonomous AI agents, more powerful on-device computing, or technologies yet to emerge, Hu believes the role of companies like ASUS remains the same: adopting new technologies quickly while ensuring they solve real business problems—not simply adding another feature to the AI race.

And for Philippine businesses, it’s clear: the challenge is no longer convincing employees to use AI. Filipino workers have already embraced it. 

The bigger question is whether organizations are ready to support AI at scale—with the right tools, the right devices, and the right workflows to truly use AI into enterprise-wide transformation.

---

Editor’s Note: This #BrandSpace story is created with ASUS. It is published by the Advertising Content Team that is independent from our Editorial Newsroom.

---