AI: RP among lowest in Asia-Pacific

The wave of the future is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the whole world is going crazy about it. But in the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines is number 12 among the 14 economies being evaluated, according to the International Data Corp. or IDC. We are too busy with politics, with typhoons, and with foreign trips. We are being left behind again. The highest performers are China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, India, and Taiwan.

Our research says that AI is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition, and machine vision. As the hype around the world progresses in geometric paces and proportions, AI has accelerated like wildfire, vendors from America to Zimbabwe, have been scrambling to promote how their products and services use it. Often, what they refer to as AI is simply a component of the technology, such as machine learning. AI requires a foundation of specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No single programming language is synonymous with AI but there are now patented intellectual properties selling software on AI.

Many decades ago, scientists already reached a consensus that the human brain can be simulated, as most countries in Europe and in the Americas for the last many years and the top economies in Asia today have gone ahead by leaps and bounds. China is the most developed. Its leaders are the most bullish, having the most advanced vision on how to win the global war in the future. America and the EU may be outwitted and outsmarted by the Chinese this time. Russia is too busy invading countries and destroying the global supply chain. Japan is not too far behind, followed by Australia and South Korea. North Korea is too preoccupied showing off its missiles and bragging to the US that it has the nuclear capability to destroy America. The modern warfare now is AI and this may be the savior of world peace.

Following South Korea is New Zealand, followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand as number 11. We are number 12. The consolation is that number 13 is Vietnam and the lowest is Indonesia as number 14. But the latest survey is that all over the 14 countries being assessed by the IDC, two out of every three are now giving more impetus to AI, tapping it in business and consumer processes. In fact, more than two-thirds of all top global brands have allocated sizable portions of their 2024 budgets for AI acquisitions of software and hardware. There are emerging top players in this new game for supremacy, like ChatGPT which can create images, text, videos, TikTok, and other applications using available data.

As usual, the governments all over the world are being left behind in technology and this would hamper the overall pace of AI development. Hence, towards the end of the first quarter this year, top technology magnates like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, in collaboration with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, issued and open letter appealing to all players to suspend AI development of new inventions for at least six months so as to allow the governments to shape and catch up. Thus, the Philippine Department of Information and Communication Technology, the focal agency on AI, should accelerate its initiatives so that our country can do better next year.

In Asia-Pacific alone, the Philippines is among the lowest in economic development in per-capita income, in wages, in employment, in food security and in disaster preparedness. But we are top in population, in inflation, in extra-judicial killings, in typhoons, in disasters, and in calamities. How can we attract investments and tourists to come to the Philippines?

We should shape up and refuse to be left behind again. Leadership is key to competitiveness but the people are the crucial factors. Competitiveness is the mark of good leadership and excellent governance. Government should reform itself and the people should put competent and honest people in government. For the last 50 years, what has been causing our downfall is bad politics, corruption, and the incompetence of those who pretend to lead us. Let us put scientists in government and send back the actors to their movie studios and the plunderers to prisons. AI may soon take over the leadership of our nation.