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MANILA, Philippines – The artificial intelligence (AI) wave is in the Philippines and it is expected to increase its influence over the operations of businesses and governments worldwide.
In the Philippines, micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) have started investing in AI just as the government has jumpstarted integrating it into its services.
Truelogic, a 15-year-old digital marketing firm based in the Philippines, in its report based on its managing partner, listed prosthetics company Instalim, logistics and delivery firm Mober, and credit scoring company Finscore among the companies that have started adopting the technology into its operations.
Truelogic CEO Itamar Gero, citing his company’s own experience integrating AI, said those choosing to adopt the technology early took into account how it can help in removing inefficiencies and reducing “mindless” work.
“MSMEs don’t have this big, big amount of data, they don’t have the big amounts of budgets to do it, but where they can start [with AI] is in the grassroots, in the employees,” Gero said in an interview with Rappler.
Truelogic handles the digital marketing of several Philippine companies. For the marketing firm, AI helps cut downtime on operations, expedite research, and streamline feedback mechanisms.
Gero said any local MSME handling customer data in marketing and research could also benefit from the technology as it afforded its employees more time to do high-level work.
“[AI] gets people to do more brain work versus, you know, waiting [for] work. What it brings about is the workforce needing to be a lot more exhaustive of their kind of high-end work versus mindless work like researching, looking at facts, copy-pasting,” he said.
Gero said Truelogic planned to continue its investments in the technology.
“Part of our processes, we do have AI; we are working on investing in our own AI tools [for] market insight, market research, because we realized there is not enough for the Filipino market to identify gaps in the market,” he said in an interview with Rappler.
“AI has streamlined anything around research, content strategies, social media strategies,” he added.
Philippine outlook on AI
On April 30, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr directed the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to make local MSMEs AI-ready, setting the tone for how the country will adopt AI technology four years after it became broadly accessible to the public through OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 and image generating Dall-E 2.
The DTI expects that with AI, as much as $92 billion could be contributed to the country’s economy within 7 years.
The DTI also launched a new “Center for AI Research” in July.
The growing AI interest in the Philippines reflects emerging trends abroad.
While still in the early implementation phase of their AI-related initiatives, six Southeast Asian nations have already joined the Philippines in releasing their own national AI framework. These countries include Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Prior to the launch of text and image-generating platforms, consultation firm Kearney already projected that AI would generate about $1 trillion for the Southeast Asian economy by 2030.
Japan-based Ana Arriola-Kanada, co-director of IDEO Tokyo and a specialist on AI and machine learning, said optimism on the impact of AI in businesses reflects global interests, given its ability to augment the operational capacities of MSMEs.
“I think the excitement is going to be in the small- and medium-sized businesses, I think it’s going to be fun to see how these little, tiny companies are going to innovate using this new technology,” she told Rappler.
“Smaller companies are probably using G Suite and Gemini; if you think about the medium-sized businesses, then they are the ones that are more likely to make the investment into more of a smaller enterprise-type solution, like the Microsoft Dynamics 365,” she said.
“So there’s a major uptick right now, you can think of it like the current state of the industry as being a movie that we all want to watch that we all waited to be released, and now the movie is being released, and we’re starting to see what the adventure is all about, what the possibilities are,” she said.
Local SMEs must adopt, adapt
According to Microsoft and LinkedIn’s “2024 Work Trend Index on AI Use at Work in the Philippines”: “86% of Filipino knowledge workers use AI at work, higher than the global average of 75% and regional average of 83%.”
Given the growing interest among both businesses and employees, Arriola-Kanada is optimistic that MSMEs will begin integrating AI to maximize its benefits, especially given the risk of job displacements in some industries if they are unable to adapt.
“I don’t think it’s taking over their job functions, I think it’s [going to] help them. They’re [going to] be able to spend more time on their product, making their product, being with their customers, building new business, doing more sales, and not having to worry about back office related stuff, so I think it’s a positive thing,” she said.
However, Arriola-Kanada pointed out that job displacements may still be possible in engineering and programming if companies in the two industries fail to adapt to the changing landscape.
Truelogic’s Gero, meanwhile, said industries have always been able to adopt emerging technologies throughout history.
“I do think [we have] this kind of self-healing property of our culture; it will not leave people behind, even if it takes a year or two, even if it [takes] changing the curriculum. This is where we have to act, the curriculum, the grassroots,” he said.
Gero pointed out that for instance, the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry should start looking at how it can use and maximize the new technology in business. As AI voice agents continue to improve, displacement within the industry remains possible. (READ: Will IT-BPM workers and students survive without AI skills?)
“So the BPO needs to look at what assets that the BPO environment here has, and try to leverage that. Try to not fight with AI, but support AI, support AI companies, support AI models, just bring AI closer to home,” the Truelogic founder said.
He noted how Truelogic adopted the technology, giving the company room for growth due to more streamlined operations and added capacity for handling data with the aid of AI.
Gero added that it is essential for MSMEs to start experimenting with AI to remain competitive.
Meanwhile, Arriola-Kanada still puts emphasis that company growth is driven by management and employees themselves. Success is not reliant on AI.
Both Gero and Arriola-Kanada mentioned limiting the influence of AI in generative image programs, to check fraud and abuses.
“If they [SMEs] stay upskilled and they continue to have that radically youthful growth mindset where they’re constantly curious about how things are changing and how to use the changes and learn how to work with the changes, they’ll be fine, they’ll be fine 20 years from now,” she said.
“It’s the people who become complacent and just use ChatGPT as it is now, asking basic questions, and they don’t do the hard work of learning where agents are going, those are the ones [who] will be displaced.” – with a report from Fernando Pierre Marcel B. dela Cruz/Rappler.com
Fernando Pierre Marcel B. dela Cruz was a Rappler intern from the University of Santo Tomas. He is a fourth-year student taking up Bachelor of Arts in Communication.
