WTO sees PHL as AI-ready due to business outsourcing

THE World Trade Organization (WTO) said artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled services are shaping up to be a potential source of competitive advantage for the Philippines.

“(The global) digitally delivered services trade, which is all trade across computer networks, is growing at almost 6%,” WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said at the Philippine pavilion at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. 

“The Philippines has an area where it can actually do well. You already have business outsourcing. You have that background, and I do agree that the shift from voice to more digital and AI-enabled services could really serve the Philippines well,” she added.

She acknowledged the country’s potential to be better in certain areas.

“I think that digitally delivered services is an area of competitive and comparative advantage for the Philippines that you should exploit quickly,” she said.“For that, you need the skills and the training … It can employ so many more people if they are AI-enabled,” she added.

Citing a WTO report, she said world trade is projected to increase by 40% by 2040, depending on how economies adopt AI.

“If we are able to adopt and have accessibility to AI equally between developing and developed countries, this will happen. If we are not, we are exacerbating inequalities,” she said.

She said developing countries should put the needed connectivity, infrastructure, and skills in place to ensure they can reap the benefits of AI.

“Let us skill our people in the use of this AI, not that it will replace them, but how can they make themselves more productive, and let us also put in place the infrastructure, including in rural areas, so that people can access this AI,” she said.

She added that the Philippines, being vulnerable to natural disasters, must invest in climate proofing and adaptation.

“It can be done in a way that helps drive the economy … You can create jobs while shifting to climate adaptation and climate mitigation techniques, and I think the Philippines needs to follow that; otherwise, it will continuously be prone to losing,” she added. — Justine Irish D. Tabile