Opportunities and risks of AI
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing economies, jobs, and industries. It can improve efficiency, boost productivity, and create new opportunities. According to the London-based research agency Public First projects, using AI can potentially add around P1.8 trillion ($31 billion) to the Philippine economy. However, it also brings risks like job losses, disruption of traditional industries, social changes, and ethical concerns. Below are some likely winners and losers or those at risk, in adapting to AI:
Winners: agriculture: AI can optimize crop management through the analysis of soil, weather, the detection of pests and diseases, and the prediction of crop growth. For the Philippines, AI can boost food security by increasing agricultural productivity by P120 billion through advances such as precision farming and early pest detection.
Automotive sector: Companies like Tesla and Ford are developing self-driving vehicles that rely on sensors, cameras, and advanced algorithms, resulting in improvements in navigation and rerouting to less-trafficked roads.
Health care: AI helps in diagnosis and treatment by analyzing large datasets for early disease detection, predicting health outcomes, and supporting surgical precision through AI-assisted robots.
Education: AI-driven systems are being utilized to personalize learning to suit each student’s pace and abilities, as well as to help teachers deliver more effective instruction.
Financial Sector: AI helps detect fraud more efficiently in real time. By 2035, the use of AI can reduce cybersecurity costs by 50 percent (P180 billion).
E-commerce, manufacturing, and customer service: Automate routine tasks, enhance productivity, and complement or replace human labor.
Jobs at risk: Administrative and clerical roles: AI-driven displacement affects those performing routine, repetitive, and rules-based tasks. Administrative and clerical roles, such as invoice processing and office support, are increasingly automated, while customer service positions are being handled by AI chatbots and virtual agents.
Paralegal roles: Entry-level legal and paralegal roles are being transformed by AI tools capable of document review and basic legal research.
Advertising roles: AI can efficiently generate marketing content like copywriting for online and printed ads. However, it often lacks the creativity and originality of humans.
Business processing jobs: A February 2025 IMF report found that 14 percent of jobs have low complementarity and are more vulnerable to displacement. BPO workers fall into the high-exposure, low-complementarity group but represent only about 3 percent of total employment. Nevertheless, since the BPO sector contributed roughly 8 to 9 percent of the Philippine economy in 2024, AI-driven changes in this sector could lead to the displacement of many workers and thereby have macroeconomic impacts.
Overall, AI adoption is likely to deliver a net gain for the Philippines if the workforce is adequately prepared. While AI can raise productivity in sectors, such as cybersecurity and agriculture, these gains may be offset by job displacement and skills mismatches without sustained investment in upskilling, education reform, and a legal framework to guide ethical use.
Equipping Filipino workers and students with both technical and soft skills is, therefore, essential. In-demand skills include AI prompting and AI programming complemented by creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving, which are skills that AI cannot easily replicate.
In basic education, the SEA-PLM 2024 report shows that seven in 10 Grade 5 students lack basic reading skills, limiting their ability to use AI effectively or develop higher-order skills. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development stresses that curricula should move beyond using AI toward its critical and ethical use, strengthening scientific literacy, reasoning, and analytical skills so students can evaluate AI outputs thoughtfully rather than accept them uncritically.
Incentivize the private sector to upskill workers: Large firms like Accenture, Google, and Microsoft already offer AI training, but wider participation is needed. The government should encourage more companies to invest in upskilling by enhancing CREATE law incentives, such as increasing the deductible for AI-related training expenses from 100 percent to 150 to 200 percent, to support large-scale workforce development.
Prioritize early nutrition and education: This is a critical prerequisite for children to later develop higher-order skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity—skills that help the youth make good use of AI. Sustained increases in the budgets of DepEd, DOH, and SUCs, including support for the first 2,000 days of life, can strengthen early cognitive and physical development.
Strengthening programs like 4Ps encourages regular health checkups, but this must be matched by better health infrastructure, as shortages in workers, vaccines, and accessible facilities reduce its effectiveness.
Incentivizing LGUs through counterpart schemes (e.g., P2 national funding for every P1 local spending) can deepen local commitment and ensure children enter school healthy, ready, and able to benefit from more advanced learning.
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Gary B. Teves is a Filipino politician and public servant who served as secretary of the Department of Finance.
