MANILA, Philippines — For Philippine corporate leaders, artificial intelligence (AI) has swiftly moved past the experimental phase. AI is transitioning out of isolated innovation labs and directly into core business operations, fundamentally rewriting how local companies manage workflows, create value, and protect market competitiveness.
Rather than asking if they should adopt the technology, local executives are now confronting a much more pressing question: How fast can AI be integrated seamlessly into the workforce to scale productivity without disrupting organizational stability?
To address the operational realities of this digital transition, industry leaders and policymakers will gather for the National AI & Skills Summit 2026 on June 1 at the Edsa Shangri-La in Mandaluyong City.
The event is hosted by executive search firm Viventis Search Asia in close coordination with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT). The cornerstone of the convention is a high-level CEO roundtable focused entirely on the theme of “AI Embedded in the Workforce.”
Global experts and local business leaders at the summit will anchor their strategies around three urgent operational themes:
Organizations are actively shifting AI out of controlled proofs-of-concept and embedding it directly into mission-critical, day-to-day corporate environments. Primary sectors seeing immediate rollout include:
- High-volume contact centers
- Corporate risk operations
- Financial underwriting
- Shared service hubs
The summit aims to push back against the generalized assumption that automation naturally equals immediate employee layoffs. Instead, leaders will focus on role redesign—structuring workflows so that AI absorbs highly repetitive, data-heavy tasks, thereby allowing human workers to move further up the corporate value chain.
The integration of automated tools requires a complete overhaul of traditional corporate evaluation. Companies must actively rethink their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), staffing structures, and standard performance management systems to effectively measure output when humans and AI operate as integrated, collaborative teams at scale.
The public sector track of the summit will feature a keynote address titled “From Vision to Execution: Building an AI-Ready Philippines,” delivered by DICT Secretary Henry Aguda.
According to the DICT, the government’s approach centers on treating AI capabilities as core national infrastructure. This operational shift requires the establishment of robust data governance frameworks, unified public-private shared data platforms, and responsible innovation policies that make it safer and more efficient for both private enterprises and state agencies to implement automated solutions safely.
