The Philippines’ AI Crossroads

Recently, lawmakers, regulators, technologists, and civil society leaders gathered around a question that has begun to haunt the Philippines’ digital ambitions.

Dominic Ligot, founder of CirroLytix, warns that the Philippines risks becoming a perpetual consumer of foreign AI systems unless it builds sovereign capacity and stronger governance frameworks.

The country is one of the world’s fastest adopters of artificial intelligence. Yet it remains structurally unprepared to build, govern, and scale it.

“We are fast adopters but slow builders,” Dominic Ligot, founder of CirroLytix, told the audience during the February 2 Post-Roundtable Policy Forum on Operationalizing Ethics, Education, Engineering, and Enforcement in Philippine AI Governance, held at the Gallardo Jr. Ballroom of Makati Diamond Residences.

“The choice before us is this: do we remain consumers of other people’s systems, or become architects of our own? Ligot asks.

The forum, organized by CirroLytix and Data and AI Ethics PH with support from the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, formally released the Grassroots Perspectives on AI roadmap.

Its central diagnosis is blunt. The Philippines is a high-usage, low-readiness environment.

While 86 percent of Filipino knowledge workers already use AI tools, exceeding global averages, institutional readiness lags behind regional peers.

Policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders convene at the February 2 AI Governance Forum in Makati to chart a roadmap from rapid adoption toward sovereign AI capability.

Infrastructure gaps, fragmented governance, limited sovereign compute capacity, and policy incoherence threaten to trap the country in permanent technological dependence.

For business professionals across finance, manufacturing, services, and the growing startup ecosystem, the implications are immediate. Adoption alone does not create durable competitive advantage.

Without domestic capacity and regulatory clarity, AI risks becoming another imported utility rather than a driver of national productivity.

Frances Claire Tayco, chief executive officer of CirroLytix, warned that local innovation is quietly stalling.

“A lot of the research that comes from the universities ends up in pilot graveyards,” she said. “How can there be enough structure for us to continue these great initiatives and allow them to benefit broader society?”

The roadmap proposes a four-part governance model spanning education, engineering, enforcement, and ethics.

It reframes AI as a national development issue rather than a narrow technology upgrade.

Frances Claire Tayco, chief executive officer of CirroLytix, highlights the country’s “pilot graveyard” problem and calls for structural reforms to scale local AI innovation beyond experimentation.

Education is positioned as the foundation.

Beyond student curriculum reform, the report calls for parent and teacher capacitation and a coordinated national AI literacy and fluency program.

DepEd Assistant Secretary Dexter Galban confirmed that an AI-ready curriculum is expected by the first quarter of 2026 under Project AGAP.AI.

The longer-term ambition is to move Filipinos from passive consumption to globally competitive creation.

Engineering, the second pillar, tackles sovereignty.

Philippine electricity costs remain among the highest in Southeast Asia. Brownouts persist outside Metro Manila, and most advanced compute power is rented from foreign cloud providers.

The report introduces a five-layer framework spanning power, data sovereignty, algorithms, governance, and societal impact.

Vicky Betita of the Philippine AI Business Association emphasized the need for sovereign AI so the country captures economic value instead of exporting it through subscription fees.

Enforcement and ethics complete the framework.

Rather than rushing toward sweeping omnibus legislation, stakeholders favored adaptive regulation and executive action.

Sherwin Pelayo, executive director of the Analytics and AI Association of the Philippines, offered industry as a regulatory sandbox.

“The best way to earn the government’s trust is through successful, responsible AI deployments,” he said. “Use us as testbeds.”

Rep. Bella Vanessa Suansing of Sultan Kudarat described the roadmap as the country’s first codified, comprehensive blueprint for AI implementation. She cautioned against copying foreign regulatory regimes wholesale.

The objective, she said, is to make AI actionable in solving immediate constituent needs, from depoliticizing social aid distribution to helping senior citizens navigate digital government services.

The Philippines’ deliberative tone stands in sharp contrast to the pace set by Singapore at the start of this year.

In its 2026 Budget, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced the formation of a National AI Council, which he will personally chair.

The city-state expanded its Enterprise Innovation Scheme to provide 400 percent tax deductions on qualifying AI expenditures and launched a Champions of AI program to help firms transform operations at scale.

Singapore has also committed more than S$1 billion from 2025 to 2030 under its National AI Research and Development Plan, upgraded compute infrastructure through a dedicated Enterprise Compute Initiative, and redesigned its SkillsFuture platform to provide clearer AI learning pathways.

Workers who complete selected AI courses receive six months of free access to premium AI tools, enabling them to experiment and apply what they have learned.

“AI is a powerful tool, but it is still a tool,” Wong said during the budget address. “It must serve our national interests and our people.”

The contrast is instructive.

Singapore couples’ adoption with fiscal incentives, centralized coordination, and infrastructure investment. It treats AI as a national economic strategy embedded at the highest political level.

The Philippines, by comparison, is only beginning to align agencies, academia, and industry around a shared blueprint.

In the same Makati forum, international observers from the United Nations Development Programme and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights echoed the warning found in the 2025 Human Development Report.

Without deliberate policy choices, AI could accelerate a “Great Divergence” between nations.

For the country’s leaders, the message is clear.

Enthusiasm for ChatGPT subscriptions and internal pilots is no longer enough.

The competitive question is whether private firms and government institutions will help shape sovereign infrastructure, invest in local talent pipelines, and participate in regulatory design.

The Philippines does not lack AI energy. It lacks coordinated, systems-level capacity.

The forum’s roadmap will now be submitted to agencies steering the National AI Strategy and to congressional committees drafting legislation.

Whether the country remains a fast adopter or becomes a sovereign builder will depend on what happens next in boardrooms, classrooms, plenary halls, and Cabinet meetings alike.

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