The impact of artificial intelligence on the Philippines job market

A good topic to introduce Cheryl and without doubt pertinent to the Philippines. Latest data shows about 1.8 million Filipinos are directly employed in the BPO industry. That’s Business Process Outsourcing to use the Lingua Franca.

A good portion of the BPO sector are call centres. Many US firms use the Philippines given their ‘relative’ proficiency in English spoken with a US accent. My Amex card uses a Philippine call centre and I find if I speak with an American accent they understand me better..

Its an unfair term to use and no disrespect to the hard working Filipinos who put in long often unsociable hours to feed the wider family unit but well its ‘grunt work’ This type of work lends itself to AI and these jobs will be the first to be automated.

Frankly if I was working in a call cente right now I would be asking my ‘team leader’ (don’t you just love that phrase) to put me down for further specialist ‘upskilling, analytical’ training. Many Filipinos in call centres have degree qualifications so could take advantage of these opportunities, especially the ones who think ‘outside the box’ many of whom do not because of how the educational and societal system works in the country.

Amazon, which after Walmart, is the largest company in terms of employee count,earlier this week  announced 16,000 layoffs worldwide; jobs that will be automated.

The only question is the time frame involved here. Like self driving cars its inevitable. Unfortunately because of  the way the Filipino economy is structured it is not in a good place to weather the tsunami that AI will bring to the world jobs market. Unlike industrial plant a call centre can be moved or replaced within a 6 week timezone.

One of the outcomes of course will be the demise of Indian call centres. Shame. Bob & I will miss those Indian accents.