Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-X6n

| X (Twitter): @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 |Facebook: SDN – SciTech & Digital News

MANILA HOTEL, One Rizal Park, Manila, March 2, 2026 (SDN) — Since its official introduction in 1956 as an academic discipline, artificial intelligence (AI) is now part of and affects every day life in every corner of a world that continues to shrink because of technology.

After 69 years, thanks to the massive interest it generated from researchers and innovators who scaled it, AI is now deeply integrated into daily life. It seems that everything people do online has AI component.

To cite a few: “streaming services’ personalized recommendations, virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and navigation through Google Maps. AI also is a tool in email spam filters, social media feeds, facial recognition, and automated fraud detection in banking”.

AI’s key uses in daily life cover Communication & Information; Entertainment & Shopping; Smart Homes & Devices; Navigation & Transportation, Productivity; and Health & Security, among others.

Over here in the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology headed by Secretary Renato U. Solidum, Jr. (DOST) is, obviously, riding on the technology bandwagon as it tries to put the Philippines in the eye of AI research and innovation as it activated the National Artificial Intelligence Center for Research and Innovation, or NAICRI, a consolidation of what he says is “years of research, computing infrastructure, and capacity-building into a permanent national institution crafted to last longer individual projects and funding cycles.”

The DOST, it turns out, has been on this undertaking for many years as it builds the foundation of the country’s future leveraging the technology.

“For years, Filipino scientists, engineers, and innovators have been building the foundations of our future, often without fanfare. Today, we give that work a permanent national anchor. This signals a deliberate shift: from fragmented and project-based AI efforts to an institutionalized, coordinated, and scalable national capability,” Solidum emphasizes.

NAICRI’s major objective is to consolidate the AI capabilities that Filipino scientists and engineers have been building for over a decade such as in super computing and weather forecasting systems to pandemic response platforms, and tools on agricultural research. But the thing is that these AI-powered initiatives while technically sound had often remained isolated, meaning that they are short-lived with temporary funding and conducted by specific teams.

Thus, NAICRI serves as a permanent national institution designed to outlast individual projects and funding cycles, a central hub for AI research, advanced computing, innovation, and the institutional backbone for the National AI Strategy for the Philippines (NAIS-PH).

At the launch, in his Keynote Address, Solidum declares: “Today is not the finish line. It is the starting line.”

Dr. Franz A. de Leon, director IV of the DOST’s Advanced Science and Technology Institute (ASTI), said the launch of NAICRI was not about ambition, but of continuity.

“The challenge was never ambition. It was continuity. NAICRI is the institutional anchor that transforms working systems into permanent national capability. What you saw today is not a plan. It is evidence,” he points out.

AI is not the end-all and be-all of solving problems of Filipinos

To achieve the objectives, the DOST identified for pillars on which the National AI Capability stands as NAICRI is organized around the four strategic pillars aligned with NAIS-PH, such as:

• 1. National AI Computing Structure — Scaling the shared computing backbone through COARE and PREGINET to meet growing demand for AI research and deployment nationwide.
• 2. AI Talent and Research Capability — Building a critical mass of Filipino AI experts through ACABAI-PH (Advancing Computing, Analytics, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence in the Philippines), which integrates shared platforms, applied use cases, and structured capacity-building.
• 3. Regional Innovation and MSME Empowerment — Extending AI tools and training beyond urban centers through regional hubs and AIgnite MSMEs, a structured pathway from AI awareness to working prototypes for small and medium enterprises.
• 4. Governance and Strategic Coordination — Embedding responsible AI standards into national platforms from the start, including access controls, traceability, and ethical frameworks.

Apparently, the DOST wants something out of NAICRI in the immediate future as it outlined its roadmap with two target priority goals within 90 days, such as:

• (1.) To conduct a national survey to develop an AI compute country profile that will assess capacity needs across government, academe, and industry to be followed by
• (2.) A multi-stakeholder consultations, and developing a training catalogue in collaboration with service providers to expand AI skills training in the regions and capable MSMEs and regional institutions to access and use the national computing facility.

Solidum emphasizes that “When we build structure we should make it self-sufficient and sustainable.”

One of the guests at the event, Michelle Alarcon, president of the Analytics Alliance of the Philippines (AAP), noted how the Philippines is “lagging” behind other countries in AI research, saying that it’s supposed to improve Filipinos lives (and address) supply chain problems, particularly with a nation composed of over 7,000 scattered islands, to benefit everyone.

But DOST Undersecretary for Research & Development Leah J. Buendia raised a red flag on relying too much on the technology. “Let’s remember AI is not the answer to all problems, not the only answer. AI is a tool.”

Exhibited at the event are some of NAICRI’s projects/project components, such: NAIRA-DIMER+ (Democratized Intelligent Model Exchange Repository), the AI-as-a-Service; NAIRA-iTanong, a homegrown AI solution which ASTI developed enabling natural-language access to databases and documents for Filipinos; NAIRA-Mus30 is the initiative for AI-enabled digitization of cultural and natural heritage assets; NAIRA-vBant.AI (Vision-Based Adaptive Intelligent Traffic Control with AI for intelligent traffic monitoring; AI4RP is the AI-Powered Weather Forecasting for a Resilient Philippines, dubbed Project Gabay; GATES, or the Geospatial Analytics Technology Solutions Program that harmonizes DOST’s datasets across key sectors; innovate (PREGINET and COARE), means the Philippines Research, Education, and Government Information Network as the country’s only national Research and Education Network or REN, COARE is Computing and Archiving Research Environment; and ROAMER (Robot for Optimized and Autonomous Mission Enhancement Responses Project which already developed a prototype autonomous unmanned ground vehicle designed to track, survey, and map banana farms.

For those who are not yet familiar, from Wikipedia, below breaks down the key moments in the invention of AI:

• 1950 (The Groundwork): British mathematician Alan Turing published “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” introducing the Turing Test to measure machine intelligence.
• 1956 (The Birth of AI): John McCarthy coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which is considered the official birth of the field.
• 1956–1960s (Early Programs): Early programs like the Logic Theorist (1956) and ELIZA (1966) demonstrated basic symbolic reasoning and natural language processing.
• 1959 (Machine Learning): Arthur Samuel coined the term “machine learning” while developing a checkers-playing program that improved itself over time.

With the launch of NAICRI, Solidum declares that the Philippines has made “a deliberate choice that will embrace artificial intelligence as a force for development, competitiveness, and progress” as Filipinos take the AI journey guided by their “own values and ambitions.” (/)

________

The author

EDD, a native of Sub-Saharan Africa Buluan/Datu Piang, Maguindanao del Sur, BARMM, college at UST, is a Manila-based journalist for over 40 years (33 years with Manila Bulletin), has five Media Awards (1 with University of the Philippines (UP) 2017 Science Journalism Award), covered and traveled over 40 times abroad), has contributed to Rappler, Business Mirror, Manila Business Insights, Panorama Magazine, Agriculture Magazine, and others, former Manila-based Foreign Correspondent of Saudi Arabia newspapers Saudi Gazette and Riyadh Daily, and The Peninsula (Qatar newspaper), with 2008 East-West Center (EWC) Journalism Seminar in the United States, 2000 Executive IT Seminar in Seoul, South Korea, with three Silver Awards in Photography, writes Muslim and Current Affairs, Enterprise, Science, Tech, Products Launch, and virtually everything under Heaven. (®)