On Saturday, 19 October 2024, the ADNU-GS successfully held a seminar on “AI and Its Role in Various Academic Fields.”   The online session (which is a part of a lecture series) was conducted through Google Meet from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM had eighty-six (86) participants including the speakers and ADNU professors and staff.

Assistant Professor Blancaflor P. Arada, the Program Chairperson of the Diploma in Computer Science Program of the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) was the first Resource Speaker with her topic “Artificial Intelligence in Today’s Business Setting.”

In her introductory message, Asst. Prof. Arada stated the definition of AI as “the process of replicating human knowledge by building models that are trained on massive amounts of data to perform tasks such as classification, prediction, and generation with outstanding accuracy.”

As a rapidly growing field, AI has common areas such as Predictive Analytics, Data Mining, Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Robotics, and Generative AI (GenAI).  GenAI is a type of AI that can generate new data (examples are texts, images, video, and audio).  It includes Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT and Gemini.

Based on Asst. Prof. Arada’s presentation, AI is converging with virtually every aspect of our present lives.  UNESCO provides: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to address some of the biggest challenges in education today, innovate teaching and learning practices, and ultimately accelerate the progress towards SDG 4.”

Furthermore, her discussion has the biggest question for educators, which is either to ban AI to avoid misusing it or to show the learners how to use AI responsibly.

She shared the approach of “Adopt and Adapt” as the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) states that “AI can be a useful tool for learning only when students have mastered basic concepts and thinking skills.  This is why MOE will also equip students with the skills to use AI tools responsibly.”

Likewise, for the responsible and trustworthy use of AI, the University of the Philippines (UP) Board of Regents approved in August 2023 a policy adopt to provide guardrails and indicate the way forward on the development and use of AI in the UP community and the whole country.  This is to promote a positive and responsible use of AI and mitigate its negative consequences.

As the basic premise of LLMs, ChatGPT and the other LLMs are trained on “ginormous amounts of data” gathered from the Internet to understand language which is based on statistical patterns and relationships between words, sentences, and phrases.  An example of this is Language Modeling which is guessing the next word based on a probability distribution of possible words.

She explained that AI such as ChatGPT has no emotions and statistical probability distributions have no feelings.  Neither is it a dangerous magic genie, but this is statistics executed on an enormous scale.

For the various common uses of AI in business, the list includes the areas with the respective applications such a Customer Service (chatbots and virtual assistants), Marketing and personalization (recommendation engines, targeted ads), Operations and supply chain (predictive analytics, inventory management), and Finance (fraud detection, risk management).

She presented the Top 4 consequences of AI use, which are hallucination, biases & discrimination, data privacy, and detection of AI-generated content.  One of the main issues in using AI is data privacy, hence, she has these suggestions to avoid the breach on this: Think before you share or post online through blogs or social media, Remember that whatever goes online, stays online, and never give or include any personal or sensitive information to the AI tool.

As a postlude, based on the AI Belief Spectrum (Pugoy, 2023), she said that AI should be considered to be a helpful tool to be used responsibly.  Objectively, this should not be completely banned nor be it considered a god-like entity.

For her final reminders, she stated the following:  AI can always hallucinate us, so we should exercise caution and always be critical thinkers; when using an AI tool, it should always be under human oversight and guidance as the AI-returned results at not gospel truths so we should always review and revise; and we must be educated on AI for us to resist cynicism and fear about it.

The second Resource Speaker was  Aljon Patrick Acupan, a Lead for Business Development of WR Numero, and Co-convenor of FOI Youth Initiative.  He shared his ideas, inputs, and insights as he discussed the topic “Leveraging AI for Transparency and Public Service – Documenting Use Cases.”

Mr. Acupan’s key messages include the following:  Use Cases of AI in the Philippines provide documented and concrete evidence of how AI can enhance public services, there are no shortcuts to achieving AI readiness, and access to information is crucial for preparedness.

He cited an example of AI Use Cases in PH as Spectee Pro, which is a cloud-based technology that leverages AI-driven image and language analysis to extract real-time, valuable data points from social media.  With this innovative crisis management system, the government can speedily collect, process, and disseminate crucial information during emergencies, especially during this time when typhoons, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and land-slides happen.

Besides this system, there are AI Traffic Management Systems in the country’s popular tourist destinations like Baguio City and Cebu City that are used for road safety and optimization of traffic flow by analyzing real-time data of vehicle density and pedestrian movement.

Likewise, AI applications are used in public management for budgeting and forecasting, fraud detection, resource allocation, citizen engagement, and performance monitoring.

Mr. Acupan cites a few applications being used in the government.  One is being used by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) which is using machine learning (ML) techniques for Inflation Forecasting and the BSP’s Department of Supervisory Analytics (DSA) explored the use of Detecting Atypical Data in enhancing their data validation process.

Similarly, the Commission on Audit (COA) will be implementing Project MIKA-EL or Machine Intelligence Knowledge-based Audit and Experience Learning, which is an AI assistant to efficiently detect fraudulent acts and spot prospective anomalous transactions.

He also mentions that on the part of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), the tax collection agency employs REVIE which is an AI digital assistant that can be accessed 24/7 at the BIR website homepage.  This application provides taxpayers and other stakeholders with the necessary information and relevant answers to the frequently asked questions (FAQs).  Furthermore, it has other features that include:  Revenue District Office (RDO) codes, Verification of TIN, Deadline inquiries, Revenue issuances, Downloading of BIR Forms, and eComplaint facility.

On the Local Government Unit (LGU) level, Mr. Acupan presented the state of data which includes the elements of Data collection, Data management, Data analytics, Policy change, and Human Development with their corresponding needs or constraints.

Finally, his recommendations are to develop a comprehensive AI readiness framework for the Philippine Public Administration, increase investments in AI research and development, foster partnerships between the public and private sectors to promote AI adoption, enhance data governance and management practices, and develop a national strategy.

A very lively and engaging Open Forum followed wherein many participants posted their questions and ideas in the chat box while the resource persons gave their insights and answers to these queries and reactions to the ideas.

The conduct of this lecture series was made possible through the able leadership of Dean Malu C. Barcillano, PhD of the ADNU GS, who delivered her highly appreciative closing remarks after the Open Forum.

Dr. Federico Jose T. Lagdameo interestingly facilitated the sessions.

Prepared by:

Mr. Jogar B. Tosoc, CESE
GS-MBA Program