Can the Philippines Think Fast Enough to Keep Up With Its Own AI Adoption?

Iloilo City - Will automation replace Filipino workers?

That question matters. For a country whose IT-BPM sector employs millions and brings in billions of dollars in export revenue, it would be careless to ignore it.

But another question may be more urgent.

What happens when workers are expected to use Al, but do not have the comprehension skills to judge its output?

"That's my biggest fear," says Alvin Juban, studio director at Synergy 88 and chairperson of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, speaking at the National Al Fest in Iloilo City. "To survive this current change in technology—that's my greatest fear for the Filipinos. Yes, we're a gentle people, we're very welcoming, we're very pleasing, but here is where we are tested. Can we actually bring up our skills for critical thinking? That's important, and critical thinking is actually rooted in mathematics," he added.

He explained that if a person's mathematical core was developed as a child, they can become a critical-thinking adult who can adjust to the demands of Al—its acceptance and its understanding—which he admitted is challenging.

"If you're going to ask someone to suddenly adjust to Al and they were not brought up to be a critical thinker, mahihirapan sila, 'di ba? (they will struggle, right?) So obviously, some people will fall off. Let's accept that. Not everyone will be able to rise to the challenge. But will there be hope for these people? Of course! Technology evolves. Let's admit it—even in game development, there are many levels and demands that even I will never understand or do. That's one thing we should change when working with government agencies. Usually, if a government agency funds a project, they expect everyone in the group to pass. But that's not real life. Not everyone passes, and not everyone will be a scholar. Let's begin to accept the challenges of real life."

Asked whether Al should be considered a threat, he said:

"It becomes a threat if you don't understand it."

True to what Juban said, Al can do a myriad of things. It can summarize a policy, draft an email, prepare a report, suggest a customer response, clean up a paragraph, translate a message, or organize notes from a meeting. For a strong reader and thinker, that can save time. It can make work sharper, faster, and more organized.

For someone with weak comprehension, or who has been struggling with other core competencies, it can create a false sense of competence.

Without proper review and vetting, outputs may look polished and organized—but the questions of whether they are accurate, factual, and up to the accepted standard still remain.

That is the danger.

Al does not make comprehension less important.

It makes comprehension harder to fake.

A worker who understands the task can use Al as a tool.

He or she can do all forms of due diligence to ensure the output follows the instruction to a tee. Another worker can check the tone of the narrative to keep it aligned with the vision of the author. Someone who understands can do a second layer of verification to make sure the facts are correct, remove any fallacies, and add detail where appropriate.

A worker who does not understand the task may use Al as a mask.

However polished the optics of a response may be, the truth still comes through: Al can make mistakes. Generated answers may look nicely structured, but the judgment behind them is missing. Communications may look clean, but to the trained eye, the actual issue may never have been answered in the email or chat. Summaries that get submitted may be worded in a way that distorts the policy being discussed. We may pass off Al-generated responses as canon, when they actually carry incorrect information. A person may mistake fluency for accuracy.

That is a familiar problem in a new form.

In BPO training rooms, Mej Julien Mabanes, a trainer who works directly with new hires, has seen trainees use sophisticated words without fully understanding them. The answer may sound impressive, but it misses the actual question. Al can create the same problem at scale-producing polished language without ensuring real understanding.

The issue is no longer just whether a worker can write.

It is whether he or she can judge what has been written.

That distinction between writing and judging is not just a workplace concern-it traces back to how learners are taught to think in the first place.

UNESCO's guidance on generative Al in education warns that reliance on these tools may affect the development of human capacities such as critical thinking and creativity, and it calls for human-centered policies that help learners use Al responsibly (UNESCO, 2023).

That warning fits the Philippine labor context closely.

"It's part of critical thinking. If you're totally enamored and swayed that Al is the new superpower without understanding its limitations, you will fall off. People who are better users of Al will call you out... This is a digital world—you cannot escape once you go digital; you will be traced. That's why speaker after speaker emphasizes ethics. Be careful how you use it. You can't just say, 'Kinopya ko 'to, Al naman.' (I copied this, it's just Al.) It takes critical thinking, ethics, and intent," says Juban.

For years, entry-level digital work rewarded workers who could execute tasks: answer calls, process tickets, respond to emails, schedule meetings, prepare reports, follow scripts, and manage administrative workflows. Many of those tasks are now being touched by automation.

This does not mean all jobs disappear. It means the work changes.

The remaining human value moves toward judgment: knowing what the customer really means, when to escalate, how to explain a policy, what information is missing, whether a source is reliable, whether an Al-generated answer is safe to use, and how to communicate uncertainty without losing trust.

These are communication skills, but not in the narrow sense. They are comprehension, reasoning, and judgment expressed through language.

Reuters reported in 2024 that IBPAP President and CEO Jack Madrid urged the Philippine outsourcing sector to build skills in areas such as IT support, cybersecurity, data analytics, and Al, warning that the country "cannot just be known as a destination doing low-complexity jobs" (Reuters, 2024).

That statement points to the real challenge. If low-complexity tasks become easier to automate, the future belongs to workers who can handle complexity. And complexity requires comprehension.

This is where education policy enters the room.

DepEd has begun phasing out grade transmutation. Under the new system, a raw grade of 75 will correspond directly to a final grade of 75, removing the adjustment that currently allows lower raw scores to pass. The change rolls out gradually: an adjusted table will still apply for School Year 2026–2027, before full removal for Grades 4 to 12 in School Year 2027–2028 (GMA News Online, 2026).

The policy is meant to make grades more reflective of actual learning. That matters.

"It is the duty and responsibility of the relevant government agencies. For example, CHED or DepEd are supposed to have programs and initiatives to redirect or enhance those capabilities. The current gaps exist because of a lack or mismatch of programs toward the necessary competencies we should be teaching," says Mitchel Mariano, a faculty member at the University of St. La Salle.

"When a person reaches the workplace, companies and organizations should also have their own initiatives and programs to refresh or teach their employees the necessary capabilities and knowledge," he added.

But this also raises a harder question: what happens to learners who are finally measured more honestly but still do not receive enough support to catch up?

The stakes behind that question are stark. EDCOM 2 has reported that student proficiency rates plunge from 30% in Grade 3 to just 0.47% in Grade 12-a decline the commission attributes to mass promotion, learning loss, and fragmented governance across the education system (EDCOM 2, 2026). The commission has called for reforms that make the Philippines competitive in both education and labor markets.

DepEd, CHED, and TESDA are also being pushed toward stronger coordination, so the education system does not keep handing its failures from one agency to the next.

These reforms are important. Additional support is warranted, too, as Al is rapidly being adopted across every level of the education system.

"Programs that educate students on the consequences of Al—teaching them what they should do instead of relying solely on it—can really help mitigate our overreliance on Al. Right now, as we reach the peak of Al, not everyone is well-educated yet on the risks. We still can't stop students from using it, but we have to make them informed so they can decide for themselves how to use it responsibly," says Mariano, when asked about the support young people need around Al in education.

But the test will not be the announcement. The test will be whether the next batch of learners can read better, think more clearly, explain their reasoning, use Al responsibly, and enter the workforce with skills that employers can actually use.

In the old version of digital work, a worker might survive with a script, a template, and basic fluency.

That world is narrowing.

In the next version, clients will expect workers to use tools. They will expect faster output, cleaner writing, and summaries, drafts, reports, and responses produced with less time and more precision.

But they will also expect the human worker to know when the tool is wrong. That is the new employability test.

Can workers understand the instruction before prompting? Can they evaluate the output after generating it? Can they identify what is missing? Can they protect confidential information? Can they adapt tone for a real client? Can they explain their decision if questioned?

The worker who can do these things becomes more valuable with Al. The worker who cannot may become easier to replace.

This is why weak comprehension is not only a school problem, or a BPO problem, or a freelancer problem. It is an economic warning.

The Philippines has spent decades building a global service brand around communication. But the definition of communication is changing. It is no longer enough to speak clearly. It is no longer enough to sound fluent. It is no longer enough to produce polished text.

The future worker must understand, verify, adapt, and explain.

Al will not remove the need for those skills. It will expose who has them.

For a country that depends heavily on global service work, the stakes are large. The warning signs are already visible.

A trainee misses the word "why." Another sounds fluent but answers the wrong question. A learner remembers a rule but cannot apply it. A future worker uses Al to produce an answer she cannot fully judge.

These are not isolated classroom inconveniences. They are warning lights flickering inside one of the country's most important economic machines.

The Philippines has built a service economy on the belief that its people can communicate with the world.

The next question is harder.

Can they think clearly enough to keep up with the tools that are changing it?