Philippines’ AI reckoning puts 13 million jobs on the line

South China Morning Post · Feb 14, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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Renso Bajala didn’t expect a machine to help decide whether he kept his job.In 2024, the 22-year-old Makati City native was on probation in a customer relations role for a US credit card company when he learned that becoming a regular employee would involve impressing a new gatekeeper: artificial intelligence.The AI analysed his tone, delivery and keyword usage, scoring each interaction for sentiment and customer experience. No one had mentioned it during training.“I was a new hire, and nothing in our training curriculum said that AI would be used to measure our performances,” Bajala told This Week in Asia. “Then the trainer informed us that the outcome from the AI software would be part of our metrics.”At first, he did not resist the idea of being evaluated by AI. What wore him down was the way the scoring felt fixed and context-blind, as if the system could not see what a human listener might understand about a difficult call.Filipino call centre workers at a business process outsourcing office in Manila. Photo: AFP“If it [the score] was low, you’d start overthinking what you did wrong, even if you felt you did your best,” he said, adding that the process felt “unfair”.