Philippines trails regional peers on AI adoption – study

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines is one of the slowest among Asia-Pacific countries to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) for business and consumer transactions, according to the International Data Corp. (IDC).

In a study, the IDC ranked the Philippines 12th among 14 economies in Asia and the Pacific in terms of progress in automation based on spending for AI platforms.

The IDC named China as the most advanced in the race to automation, followed by Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, India and Taiwan.

The IDC placed New Zealand eighth, Hong Kong ninth, Malaysia 10th and Thailand 11th. On the other hand, Vietnam and Indonesia sat at the bottom of the list, recording the lowest investments for AI platforms in the region.

The report, however, said countries in Asia and the Pacific are starting to explore the opportunities and risks of tapping AI for business and consumer processes. Two in every three firms have allocated a portion of their 2023 budget for the integration of generative AI in their daily operations.

Generative AI like ChatGPT refers to programs that can create images, texts and videos based on available data.

The IDC, for its part, believes that 30 percent of AI models will incorporate multiple modalities of data by 2026, allowing them to improve the way they gather data and respond to prompts.

As such, the IDC forecasts the use of AI platforms in Asia and the Pacific to keep on growing in the next few years, noting that adoption rate in the region jumped to 76 percent in 2022 from 39 percent in 2021.

“Asia-Pacific is ahead in the investment priority of generative AI. Two thirds of organizations in Asia-Pacific are either exploring potential use cases or have even gone ahead with investments in generative AI technologies in 2023,” the IDC said.

Also, the IDC said that companies in Asia and the Pacific want to use generative AI to raise enterprise intelligence and remove operational inefficiencies. They intend to automate mainly functions on finance, sales and marketing.

On the other hand, the IDC warned organizations to tread with caution on the use of generative AI, reminding them that some platforms are prone to inaccuracy and misuse.

In March, tech icons including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak issued an open letter seeking a six-month suspension of new AI development, to give governments time to catch up and come up with regulations.