Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t the devil everyone makes it out to be. In the arguments hurled back and forth between black and white, good or bad, we forget that ultimately, we hold AI in our hands. It doesn’t think for us unless we allow it; it doesn’t steal unless we give the orders.

My first ever published article for The HERALDO FILIPINO was about AI and art. In it, I ended with this exact sentence: “Now the question is, where do we go from here?”
In one of my last pieces for this publication, I finally get to answer a question I posed to myself and my readers.

Back then, AI was still in the infancy of its controversies. For most people, the sentiment was just “Look at those weird hands!” Since I first asked that question in 2023, we’ve had three years of rapid development. According to McKinsey & Company’s 2025 report, 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one setting. Deepfaked clips shape the landscape of elections. Today, whenever I open that broadsheet file, Adobe still asks if I want a “generative summary” of it.

That’s where we’re at.

AI has become so deeply woven into the cyberscape. Everyone knows the dangers. Most use it anyway. Too often, AI becomes the center of debate when there are far more tangible problems at hand.

Ultimately, the headline “AI is set to replace millions of jobs” is much simpler than “Employers are steadily doing mass layoffs in a bid for corporate consolidation.” 

A study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the Philippine labor market outlines that workers in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry—3% of the labor force—are highly exposed to AI-driven restructuring. Considering that BPO accounts for 7.4% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the concern stops being theoretical.

If the world was a house on fire, AI would be the leaky faucet. It’s not burning the house down, but it will cause damage.

It cannot be ignored. The students using AI today will be the professionals of tomorrow. I don’t want a future where my doctor consults Gemini to diagnose me. I don’t want engineers drafting bridge designs with ChatGPT. But I also know that refusing to learn the best tools available would set future professionals back. If everyone is using a tool and you aren’t, you’ve fallen behind.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) adopted the National AI Strategy Roadmap 2.0 (NAISR 2.0) in 2025, aiming to integrate generative AI and upskilling more into the workflow. The same study done by the IMF found that 68% of jobs are more likely to be augmented by AI than replaced by it.

And herein lies the crux of the issue: AI is not black or white. Its existence is one thing—our dependence on it is another. In that little gap between apathy and convenience, real problems thrive. 

The carbon footprint, the intellectual property theft, the job displacement—these are not the schemes of a singular automaton, some techno-god plaguing the streets with malicious intent. They are the work of corporations, and within those corporations, people who profit.

Ultimately, capitalist society doesn’t run on principles. It runs on convenience—and convenience has no conscience. It is up to the masses, you and me, to draw our own lines.

I do not fear AI, for it is a tool. A blade being honed back and forth across a whetstone of datasets and stolen assets.
The question is not “Where do we go from here?”

The question is whether we’ll hold ourselves—and others—accountable for the paths already chosen.

[…]

AI Summary

This column discusses artificial intelligence as a tool and a threat. The author asserts that while broader society debates on the morality of AI, the real danger is in corporate misuse, overdependence, and complacency.

Predicted Reader Response: 42% engaged; 22% conflicted; 15% defensive; 21% stopped reading after the caption.

Overall Quality Score: 8.6/10—algorithmically high-performing.

Originally published in Heraldo Filipino Volume 40, Issue 1.