PHILIPPINE FIRMS must speed up the mixing of artificial intelligence (AI) and put money into infrastructure, talent, and governance to unlock potential gains of as much as 12% in national economic output, in keeping with industry experts.
“AI could drive anywhere from an 8% to 12% increase within the GDP (gross domestic product) of the country by 2030,” Kearney Senior Partner and Philippines Country Head Marco de la Rosa said during a panel discussion on the BusinessWorld Forecast 2026 on Nov. 25.
He said realizing that potential would require increased investments and more “democratized” access to AI technologies.
Enterprises, regulators and the federal government also needs to engage in what he described as a “healthy dialogue” on the right way to further improve AI adoption and governance.
“It could be great to see more enterprise capital or private equity monies coming into the country, investing within the AI capabilities locally,” Mr. De la Rosa said.
Ambe C. Tierro, country managing director at Accenture Philippines, said firms’ AI strategies have to be grounded on technology, talent, and trust.
Organizations should have accurate data and secure cloud systems to provide relevant outputs from their AI infrastructure, she said.
“If you have got a really sophisticated AI model, your data is the oxygen, so if the oxygen is bad, then the AI won’t produce the suitable output,” Ms. Tierro said.
She also cited the necessity for firms to reap the benefits of the country’s young population by pushing AI-related upskilling.
“This generation learns fast, and so we’d like to capitalize on that demographic and train people as fast as we are able to,” she said.
Ms. Tierro added that firms should have a framework for ethics, fairness and transparency to keep up trust while using AI.
“You possibly can make numerous progress with AI, but as soon as you break trust, you fall backwards,” she said.
Brian Daniel Poe Llamanzares, a congressman and chairperson of the Global AI Council’s Advisory Board for the Philippines, cited the necessity for more local servers to host Philippine firms’ data.
“The Philippines needs to be taking a look at ways wherein we are able to host servers here reasonably than us contacting them outside, not only for personal sector use, but additionally since it’s a national security concern,” he told the panel.
He said most local firms’ data utilized in AI applications is currently outsourced for cloud services.
Mr. De la Rosa said the country also needs to expand its pool of science, technology, engineering and arithmetic (STEM) graduates to change into more AI-ready.
Firms should increase the supply of AI tools for his or her employees to make sure their data will not be fed into unregulated platforms, he added.
“If it’s not available to them, they’re going to search out a approach to use it elsewhere,” he said. “So, make the capabilities available, after which put the guardrails around it.”
Ms. Tierro said AI integration also requires cultural transformation inside firms.
“As increasingly firms implement AI, they’re realizing this will not be a plug-and-play technology,” she said. “It must be embedded within the strategy. It’s the strategy.”
For Mr. De la Rosa, firms should avoid each overreacting and underreacting to AI.
“There’s a general acceptance that AI is here to remain, but at the identical time, it could be remiss of us to try to overreact and take a look at to do an excessive amount of without thought,” he said. — Beatriz Marie D. Cruz