PHL businesses must build expertise to prepare for agentic Al era, Microsoft says

PHILIPPINE BUSINESSES looking to adopt agentic artificial intelligence (AI) must put an emphasis on agent training to guard against biases and ensure responsible data use, Microsoft Philippines said.

- By Beatriz Marie D. Cruz

“The agents aren’t people — they are designed by us. So, we're the ones that ground the AI, point it to the data that it works with, and we're the ones that train it against biases and wrong information,” Microsoft Philippines Chief Executive Officer Peter D. Maquera said in an interview with BusinessWorld.

“If you don’t have the AI expertise to architect that in your organization, then how will you ever deploy it at scale? You'll just be stuck doing AI at the individual level.”

About 89% of Philippine leaders say they are confident about having AI agents as digital team members to expand their workforce capacity in the next 12 to 18 months, according to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index report.

However, while 60% of Philippine leaders are extremely familiar with AI agents, only 42% of employees can say the same, it said.