PAUL NICHOLAS SORIANO
The Philippines is a global giant in outsourced office work. Its roughly 1.6 million workers are on the front lines for replacement by generative AI.
The country’s parliament and industry are attempting to find ways to handle the technological shift without huge job losses. But finding consensus has been hard — and generative AI is moving fast.
Bernie’s customers don’t know it, but the diplomatic charm of generative artificial intelligence has been smoothing out all of their exchanges. His bosses don’t know, either — and he would be in trouble if they did.
Bernie, who requested to be identified only by his first name as he feared retribution from his employer, works as a technical support agent in a massive IT call center in the Philippines. His customers are English speakers, often irritated and short on patience as they reach out to him while battling a malfunctioning program or network issues. Since 2022, as tools like ChatGPT and Bing exploded in popularity, Bernie has been quietly using them in the background to generate responses.
“It made my work easier. I can even get ideas on how to approach certain complaints, making [my answers] appear engaging, persuasive, empathetic. It can give you that, depending on the prompt that you input,” Bernie told Rest of World. Though he thinks he isn’t the only tech support worker using AI for this purpose, he said the “other agents have tended to be completely dependent on the AI responses, and they sometimes end up giving a response that is inappropriate to the customer’s concerns.”
Bernie now uses ChatGPT and Bing to compile all the technical information he needs for a query in less than five minutes. It’s doubled the number of customer complaints he can handle in a day. Yet, his workplace — a U.S.-based, publicly listed “customer experience” giant with employees across more than 40 countries — forbids its agents from using generative AI, according to Bernie.
The Philippines is one of the world’s biggest centers for business process outsourcing (BPO), an industry dedicated to outsourcing entire business operations — such as customer helplines and content moderation — to other companies. Thanks to the explosion in generative AI, the industry is scrambling to find a balance between automating its roughly 1.6 million workers out of a job and losing its clients to other outsourcing centers that can offer generative AI-powered services at cheaper costs. With the multibillion-dollar industry accounting for 7.5% of the Philippine economy, political and business leaders are pushing to form a plan — often in different directions.
According to Mon Ibrahim, a former official with the information and communications technology agency that helped pioneer the Philippines’ BPO sector in the early 2000s, an official plan needs to deal with the technological shift.
7.5%Percentage of the Philippine economy that business process outsourcing represents.
“But if the government won’t do something to capacitate workers to use AI in the next five years, then I think it will leave a huge impact,” Ibrahim told Rest of World. “That’s when workers might lose their jobs.”
BPO companies began experimenting with AI tools like chatbots in 2018, he said, mainly for repetitive and rules-based interactions. Often, their responses lacked empathy and sparked frustration among customers, even while they sped up queries. With the leap to generative AI, however, that risk has reduced.
In early May, Philippine senator Imee Marcos filed a resolution calling for an inquiry into the potential displacement of workers from the BPO and manufacturing industries.
“AI is developing faster than most people can comprehend, and is threatening to take away jobs and turn employment growth upside down,” the senator, sister of President Bongbong Marcos, warned during a session of Congress. She cited a study by Oxford Economics and tech company Cisco, which estimated that digital automation could make 1.1 million roles in the Philippines obsolete by 2028.
The senator also urged that lawmakers be educated on global developments in AI, and stressed the need for legislators to cooperate and deal with “an inevitable technological tsunami.”
Jack Madrid, president of the industry lobby IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), told Rest of World call centers should be able to integrate generative AI, but that workers — like Bernie’s colleagues who sent tone-deaf replies — should also be properly taught how to use the tools. The sector, he said, is “worth defending.”
“This is a wake-up call.”
The business association recently formed an AI Council, which seeks to bring together experts, industry members, and academics to develop upskilling programs for BPO workers. These programs are aimed at enabling the workforce to perform higher-value work that’s still beyond the scope of AI.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Madrid. “I understand that there are some concerns, but I also think that the only thing we should be worried about is our inability to upskill … our workforce.”
The timeline for these programs, though, is still vague. And even as calls for clearer guidelines slow down the Philippine BPO industry’s adoption of AI, other sectors are moving ahead. One example is Navix Health, a buzzy generative AI startup that helps produce documents for medical professionals. Its app was built entirely by Filipino developers.
The company’s CEO, Colin Christie, acknowledged to Rest of World that using AI tools could mean displacing human workers. Navix Health’s AI platform, for instance, does the work that medical receptionists might normally do. But Christie said he believes that although some of the workforce might lose their jobs, new and different work could be created from the increased business that results from AI adoption.
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According to those like Senator Marcos and Ibrahim, however, facing the technological shift is not about productivity, but rather, a necessity for Filipino workers’ survival.
“We need to start [adapting] now,” said Ibrahim. “The nature of the sector is very competitive. If you’re not using AI for your projects, it will be very hard for you to compete with those who do.”
For the Philippines, the decision may be unavoidable, he said. “Whether you like it or not, you will have to move up and look at using AI, otherwise you lose your business,” said Ibrahim. “When you do, workers will lose their jobs.”
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