You’ve seen it: students letting ChatGPT write their essays, workers outsourcing emails to bots, even teachers asking AI to draft quizzes. Efficient? Definitely.
But as I scroll through more and more auto-generated prose—fluent but soulless—I can’t help but ask:
Are we actually getting smarter, or slowly forgetting how to think?
Earlier this year, I reviewed thesis proposals that looked clean and well-written—at first. However, once I checked the citations, none of the sources held up. The referenced studies—allegedly from “Filipino forensic science literature”—simply didn’t exist. They were AI hallucinations: fabricated titles, imaginary authors, and entire bibliographies built on sand.
As a professor, I know most—if not all—of my students are already using AI. The signs are clear. The English is too smooth. The metaphors are too Western. The logic, too perfectly sequenced. And if you asked them to explain their own work? Many wouldn’t know where to begin.
Moreover, it’s not just students. Friends working in corporate offices have shared the same shift. Memos are drafted in seconds. Reports are generated on command. Presentations get polished without much effort. The workload feels lighter—but so does the thinking.
Is AI Making Us Dumber?
There’s increasing evidence that relying too much on AI can dull our cognitive skills.
For example, a study from the MIT Media Lab found that students who used ChatGPT for writing tasks showed lower brain engagement, reduced creativity, and weaker memory retention than students who wrote unaided.
In Australia, teachers warn of “digital amnesia”—a growing pattern where students forget how to solve problems because AI solves them first.
This goes far beyond spelling or grammar. More importantly, it’s about core habits of thought: recall, analysis, comparison, reflection. The more we outsource those functions to machines, the more we risk losing them.
Why the Philippines Should Be Worried
Here’s where AI in the Philippines becomes a deeper concern.
According to World Population Review, the average IQ in the Philippines is 81—well below global averages. While IQ is far from a perfect measure, it still correlates with performance in education, innovation, and health outcomes.
That means we’re starting from a vulnerable position. And when we add premature, uncritical AI use, we risk widening the learning gap even further.
Students may turn in assignments polished by AI but without the intellectual stamina to back them up. They may present well—but understand little. When that happens, critical thinking atrophies, and the capacity for independent judgment fades before it’s even developed.
Our Brains Are Changing—That’s Not All Bad
Still, this doesn’t mean we’re doomed. The real story of AI in the Philippines is more nuanced.
We’re not just losing something—we’re also gaining something else.
As we rely less on rote memory or manual writing, we start developing other skills: synthesis, multimodal thinking, creative collaboration with machines. This isn’t collapse. It’s cognitive trade-off.
The bigger question is: Can we manage that trade-off well?
In a country with fragile educational systems and vast inequality, this shift could go badly. Those with stronger foundations might adapt. Others might fall into passive dependence—never developing the mental muscles needed for critical learning.
However, if we guide this change, we can train new ways of thinking. AI can become a tool for building—not bypassing—intelligence.
Five Ways to Make AI Work for Us
To make sure AI in the Philippines empowers rather than weakens us, we need structural change in how we approach learning, especially in schools.
1. Rethink classroom use.
Don’t ban AI. Instead, design activities that require students to evaluate, critique, and compare AI-generated outputs. Let it spark debate—not just automation.
2. Build mental endurance.
Curricula should include long-form reading, hand-written assignments, and multi-step reasoning challenges. These develop cognitive stamina, not shortcuts.
3. Promote active—not passive—AI use.
Encourage students to test and refine AI results. Ask them to identify flaws, compare drafts, or rewrite machine outputs. Use the tool to deepen thinking, not avoid it.
4. Invest in local research.
Most AI research comes from the Global North. We need Filipino-led studies on how AI is changing learning, communication, and culture in our context.
5. Launch a public brain-building campaign.
Government should lead efforts to improve cognitive health—through nutrition, early education, literacy, and media literacy. A smarter future begins with stronger minds.
AI in the Philippines: It’s Not the Tool
Ultimately, AI in the Philippines isn’t making us dumber. It’s making us different.
The real danger lies not in the tools we build—but in how quietly we’re letting them reshape us.
The human brain is like a muscle. Stop using it, and it weakens. Use it differently, and it changes. The challenge now is to ensure that what we gain is truly worth what we lose.
The future of intelligence—Filipino or otherwise—will depend not on machines, but on the minds we continue to cultivate.
About the Author:
Richard Jonathan O. Taduran, Ph.D. is a professor of forensic science whose research intersects criminalistics, cognition, and digital literacy. He explores how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping critical thinking, truth verification, and education in the Philippine context.
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