I Made 9 AI Predictions in 2023, Here’s What Actually Happened
It was 2023, barely six months into the AI boom, when I stood in front of a crowd and shared nine bold ideas about where artificial intelligence might take us. At that time, we were still in the honeymoon phase. ChatGPT felt magical. AI images felt playful. But I said then that the fun part was ending. We had to make real choices. AI would not be a simple story of good or bad. It would become whatever we allowed it to be.
Let’s start with jobs. Back then, many believed AI would
create new kinds of work. The reality is more muted. We haven’t seen many
brand-new AI jobs yet. Instead, AI has slipped into almost every job that
already exists. Prompting is now part of daily work, from writing emails to
planning projects. At the same time, AI threatens our BPO industry, which
supports millions of Filipinos. That risk no longer feels distant. It feels
close.
Education has aged the worst. AI is quietly undermining both
basic and higher education. Professors cannot fully ban it, and students don’t
see a problem with using it to shortcut learning. Many lessons feel outdated,
and instead of fixing the system, AI is helping students work around it. That
should worry all of us.
Creativity was once a hopeful space. AI allowed people who
never saw themselves as artists to create. But today, many creative jobs have
taken a hit. Our feeds are flooded with low-quality AI content. It’s fast,
cheap, and endless. Real creative work struggles to stand out in the noise.
Innovation sounds exciting, but the truth is uncomfortable.
We are deeply dependent on AI tools built in the United States. Even with
open-source software, we rely on foreign infrastructure. The dream of sovereign
AI, AI we truly control, feels far away and mostly out of reach.
The digital divide still depends on internet access. That
hasn’t changed. But here’s the surprise: nearly nine out of ten Filipinos are
already using AI. Most use it in simple ways. They ask questions. They write
messages. They explore ideas. AI adoption is wide, even if it is shallow.
Privacy has quietly shifted. AI now holds huge amounts of
personal information. For many people, it has replaced search as their main
source of truth. That’s risky, especially since AI still hallucinates and makes
things up with confidence.
Productivity is where AI delivers. Agentic AI shows real
promise. Tasks move faster. Work feels lighter. The fear of AI going rogue
still feels like science fiction, at least for now.
Disinformation, sadly, has not improved. Journalists focus
on fact-checking, but there is little resistance to algorithms or paid
amplification that spread lies faster than truth.
And then there’s climate. Data centers keep growing. Power
use keeps rising. AI adds to the problem, but its role is often overstated
compared to other energy drains.
Back in 2023, I said AI would not be a utopia or a dystopia.
I still believe that. AI is a mirror. What we see depends on the choices we
make, and how brave we are in making them.
About Me:
Dominic “Doc” Ligot is
one of the leading voices in AI in the Philippines. Doc has been extensively
cited in local and global media outlets including The Economist, South China
Morning Post, Washington Post, and Agence France Presse. His award-winning work
has been recognized and published by prestigious organizations such as NASA,
Data.org, Digital Public Goods Alliance, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO),
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization
(WHO), and UNICEF.
If you need guidance
or training in maximizing AI for your career or business, reach out to Doc via https://docligot.com.
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