Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL I have been watching The Lord of the Rings for as long as I can remember. Long before I knew what a university was, long before I imagined myself leaving home, I knew Middle-earth. It was the landscape of my childhood imagination—misty mountains, ancient forests, and the quiet courage of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary journeys. Maybe that is why, when I arrived in Oxford for the first time as a student, the place I most wanted to visit wasn’t my college, or the Bodleian Library, or even the Radcliffe Camera. It was a bench in University Parks—the J.R.R. Tolkien Bench—tucked near High Bridge. To get there, I walk a route that has quickly become ritual. From the bustle of Broad Street, I pass Balliol College—its sturdy walls and serene quad giving the type of gravitas that only a place founded in the 13th century can hold. A few minutes later I find myself near New College, its medieval cloisters whispering stories older than most nations. Linacre College, more modern but no less thoughtful in its presence, comes next. Then the path opens, the noise softens, and University Parks unfolds like a deep breath. There are grander sights in Oxford, more photographed, more talked about. But this walk is mine. It is the one that leads me back to a childhood dream and into a present I’m still learning to believe is real. The Tolkien Bench is simple—weathered wood overlooking a gentle sweep of green. There is nothing ostentatious about it. Perhaps that is what I love most. Tolkien valued the quiet things, the small things, the unnoticed beauties of the world. Sitting there, listening to the River Cherwell move with unhurried certainty, I feel a sense of peace that is hard to find anywhere else. Whenever I have time between classes, or when studying feels overwhelming, or when the wider world presses too hard on my shoulders, you’ll often find me there. Just sitting. Just breathing. Just letting the enormity of everything settle. Because the truth is, studying at Oxford still feels unreal. There are days when I walk through Radcliffe Square and feel the ancient stones under my feet and wonder if I am dreaming. There are mornings when I open a book in the Bodleian—its pages crisp with centuries—and think of how unlikely it is that my life led me here. I study hard, not just for myself but because I know that when I sit in a lecture hall or step into a tutorial, I am carrying more than my own hopes. I am carrying the hopes of my community, my family, and the Indigenous group I belong to—people who have shaped me, loved me, taught me to be grounded even when walking through unfamiliar worlds. There were not many people from my community who made it to institutions like this. Some never had the chance. Some never had the access. Some never dared to imagine it. And that is why I work—why I give my best, why I hold myself to standards that sometimes frighten me. I want to be a good representation of where I come from. I want more people from my community to know that these paths, these benches, these quiet corners of world-famous universities can also be theirs. Oxford has changed my life. Not by making me someone new, but by showing me the possibilities of who I could become while still honoring who I am. Every time I sit at the Tolkien Bench, I think of little-kid me watching hobbits leave the Shire—nervous but brave, ordinary but capable of extraordinary things. And I realize: that journey wasn’t so different from my own. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin A city reveals its values not through speeches or slogans, but through sidewalks, buses, corridors, crossings, and doorways. It reveals who it welcomes—and who it quietly leaves behind. And the uncomfortable truth is that far too many of our cities and municipalities are still built for only a portion of the people who live in them. Persons with disabilities remain afterthoughts in design, tolerated rather than enabled, accommodated rather than empowered. It does not have to be this way. In many parts of the world, persons with disabilities are not only consulted when public infrastructure is designed—they are part of the process. A person in a wheelchair contributing to the planning of a new transit route, a visually impaired commuter advising on station layouts, or a neurodiver-gent commuter shaping sensory-friendly spaces is not unusual; it is expected. These cities understand a simple truth: you cannot design an inclusive environment without including the people who depend on it most. We should expect the same ambition from our own municipalities. Accessibility must stop being a bureau-cratic checkbox and become a central design principle. Because when infrastructure fails persons with disabilities, it does more than inconvenience them—it dis-enfranchises them. A broken curb ramp is not merely a crack in the pavement; it is a barrier to employment. An inaccessible bus is not just an oversight; it is a denial of independence. A building without elevators is not an inconvenience; it is an exclusion. Cities are living systems, and like any system, they are only as strong as their weakest link. When infrastruc-ture excludes people with disabilities, it weakens the social, economic, and civic fabric of the entire communi-ty. Conversely, when cities design for those most at risk of being left out, everyone benefits. Ramps help parents with strollers. Clear signage helps tourists. Smooth paths help the elderly. Universal design is universal in its returns. Redesigning our infrastructure is not a matter of charity; it is a matter of justice. Persons with disabilities are not asking for special treatment—they are asserting their right to move, to participate, and to belong. And municipalities have a responsibility to ensure that right is realised in concrete, tactile, everyday ways. This means involving persons with disabilities at every stage of planning—not at the end, as testers, but at the beginning, as co-creators. It means allocating real budgets, not symbolic ones. It means ensuring that every new project—whether a bus stop, a housing complex, or a public park—meets accessibility standards not as a favour, but as a baseline requirement of a modern society. We cannot continue building cities that leave behind the very members of the community who most need public space, public transport, and public services. If we want inclusive cities, we must design them intention-ally. If we want equitable progress, we must start with the people who have been excluded for far too long. It is time to build cities that welcome everyone—not just in principle, but in practice. The blue-print for an inclusive future is already there. All we need is the will to build it. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL History, we are told, is written by the victors. For a country like the Philippines—conquered, traded, occupied, and reshaped by forces far beyond our shores—that phrase has never been merely a saying. It has been a lived reality. For centuries, our narrative was crafted not by the people who tilled our soil, built our communities, and carried our culture, but by those who claimed dominion over us. And for too long, we accepted their version of our story as the truth. But there is a growing, urgent need to reclaim Filipino pride by rewriting our history—not with new fictions, not with convenient nostalgia, but with our own voice at the center. We must tell our story from the perspective of the Filipinos, not the victors of war or the colonizers who shaped our textbooks and dictated the terms of our identity. Because the truth is simple: a nation cannot rise when its memory is borrowed. When we read about pre-colonial Philippines in many older history books, what do we find? A portrayal of our ancestors as uncivilized, simplistic, or lacking sophistication. We were described as tribal, chaotic, needing salvation or order. But new research—conducted by Filipino scholars and historians—tells a different story. We were a thriving archipelago of advanced maritime cultures, with complex legal systems, rich trade networks, and spiritual traditions deeply intertwined with the land and sea. Our ancestors were navigators who could read the stars, healers who understood the language of plants, and artisans whose craftsmanship rivaled those of the great kingdoms of the world. Yet these truths were buried beneath narratives that served the conqueror, not the conquered. Why does it matter? Because a people disconnected from their own greatness cannot fully claim their future. Pride does not come from borrowed stories; it comes from recognizing our own worth. And to do that, we must go back—not to romanticize, but to remember. Rewriting history is not an act of rebellion; it is an act of restoration. It is placing the Filipino at the center of the Filipino story. It is looking at Lapu-Lapu not as a footnote to Magellan’s voyage, but as a leader defending his sovereignty. It is acknowledging that our resistance movements—from the Katipuneros to the farmers and women who fought quietly in the margins—were not the work of savages but of patriots. It is confronting the uncomfortable truths of collaboration, struggle, and betrayal—not to shame ourselves, but to better understand the forces that shaped us. And just as important, rewriting our history means reclaiming our languages, our mythologies, our cultural expressions that survived despite every attempt to erase them. Every dialect spoken today is a victory. Every indigenous tradition that remains intact is a testament to resilience. Every story told in our own terms is a step toward healing. We must teach our children a version of history that does not begin with the arrival of our colonizers but with the brilliance of our own ancestors. We must cultivate a new generation of Filipinos who know that their identity is rooted not in defeat, but in endurance. Not in shame, but in strength. Because pride is not something given to a nation—it is something a nation claims for itself. And the first step is to reclaim the narrative. To rewrite our history is to reclaim our dignity. To reclaim our dignity is to rebuild our pride. And only when we take ownership of our story can we finally rise as a people who know exactly who we have always been. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin Governments around the world are making grand declarations about their ambitions in artificial intelligence. Strategies are unveiled, taskforces formed, and glossy visions laid out in conference halls. Yet one truth remains stubbornly ignored: you cannot develop indigenous AI capacity without giving your next generation of thinkers—the students—the raw compute power they need to learn, experiment, fail, and build again. Put plainly: if a country is not institutionalizing compute access for its students, it is not serious about AI. For all the rhetoric about economic transformation and global competitiveness, governments continue to treat compute like a luxury commodity—locked behind grant applications, corporate partnerships, or the sheer luck of attending a well-funded university. But AI is no longer a specialized research niche. It is becoming a general-purpose technology, as fundamental to modern innovation as electricity once was. You would not tell engineering students to design turbines without tools. You would not tell chemistry students to innovate without a lab. Yet this is exactly what we are doing with AI: asking students to compete in a global race armed with nothing but laptops that can barely fine-tune a model, never mind train one. Real leadership means building national compute infrastructure accessible to every student who wants to learn, tinker, or create. This infrastructure should be treated as educational public capital—like libraries, laboratories, and national broadband. And it should be designed at scale, with costs amortized across generations of innovator. Because compute isn’t just about raw capacity. It is about creating a culture of experimentation. Students must be allowed to make mistakes. To break things. To iterate. To test a model that fails spectacularly and then go back to the drawing board. Innovation is not a linear process—it is a messy, unpredictable dance between intuition and evidence. You cannot simulate that with theoretical coursework alone. Students need the friction and the thrill of real compute. They need to feel the weight of training jobs, optimization choices, and the economics of scaling. They need to understand—through practice—what it takes to build responsibly. And here is the point policymakers often miss: compute access is not merely a technical issue; it is an equity issue. Today, students from wealthier families or elite institutions have far more opportunities to engage meaningfully with AI. By institutionalizing compute access, governments can democratize innovation. They can turn AI from an exclusive domain into a civic resource. The countries that dominate AI in the future will be those that empower their youngest minds today. Not by restricting models. Not by hoarding infrastructure. But by opening the doors to experimentation at scale. If we want AI capacity, we must start at the roots. Give students the tools. Give them the compute. Then step back and let them invent the future—chaotically, ambitiously, and brilliantly. That is how you build a nation capable of leading in AI. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin NIGHT OWL There is a quiet turning point in life that arrives without warning—when the things that once made you shrink suddenly become the things that make you stand taller. I did not recognize this moment at first; it revealed itself slowly, in hindsight, as I began to appreciate where I came from and who I had become. For years, like many Filipinos conditioned by generations of subtle and not-so-subtle pressure, I believed I had to sand down the parts of myself that felt “too provincial,” “too local,” “too different.” The world had taught me that assimilation was a measure of success. But now, I see clearly: the things people once used to shame me are precisely the parts of myself that carry the most truth, the most history, and the most dignity. These are not flaws—they are evidence of heritage. I wear them now like a badge of honor. Take intonation, for example. People comment on it with a smirk, as if speaking differently were some sign of inadequacy or lack of sophistication. I used to worry about this, practicing neutral accents, ironing over every regional sound in my voice. But today, when someone says, “May intonation ka,” I reply, calmly and assured, “Lahat tayo may intonation.”Because it’s true. Every person, no matter where they come from—from Manila to Mindanao, from New York to New Delhi—has an accent shaped by their community. The only difference is that some accents are treated as superior, while others are treated as something to rid ourselves of. Why should I apologize for the sound of home? The pride of a people begins with language. Our words, our cadence, the way our vowels bend and our consonants soften—these are the first markers of identity. They tell the story of who raised us, who taught us, who loved us, and which shores our ancestors stood on long before anyone told us to be ashamed. Language is the oldest heirloom we inherit. It is alive, breathing, adapting, and resisting. To speak our dialect—whether it is Cebuano, Ilocano, Waray, Hiligaynon, Kapampangan, Tausug, or any of the many tongues woven through our archipelago—is to declare that our culture is worthy of pride and protection. The moment we stop apologizing for how we speak is also the moment we stop apologizing for who we are. And that moment matters, not only for personal healing but for national progress. A nation cannot rise if its people are taught to diminish themselves. A country cannot thrive if its citizens believe that their value depends on how closely they mimic someone else’s voice. The colonial mindset thrives on the idea that what is foreign is superior. But imagine what could happen—what kind of Philippines we could build—if we embraced our own stories, our own tongues, our own cultural texture without hesitation. I have come to appreciate my life more deeply because I have learned to claim every part of it, including the parts others once mocked. I no longer see these traits as weaknesses but as threads of identity. They remind me that I come from a long line of people who endured, created, loved, and existed long before anyone demanded we conform. If there is one thing my own journey has taught me, it is this: True liberation starts when we stop letting others define what should make us proud. A nation begins with individuals who refuse to be shamed for being Filipino—fully, loudly, and unapologetically. In reclaiming what once hurt us, we reclaim our power. And in doing so, we move closer to building a Philippines rooted not in imitation, but in authenticity. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin I recently had the honor of being introduced by my counsellor, Vimbai Masiyiwa – and I’m still processing what that moment meant for me, not just as a young leader, but as an indigenous person trying to find my place in global conversations. Before I met her, I knew the public headlines: CEO and chief creative officer of Batoka Africa, Forbes Africa 30 Under 30, Zimbabwe CEO Network’s Outstanding Young CEO, a style icon on Tatler’s Best Dressed List. But none of that prepared me for the woman who stood in front of us: grounded, warm, deeply intentional – and fiercely committed to re-imagining what African, and more specifically indigenous, leadership can look like. Batoka Africa, the eco-tourism company she co-founded with her mother, Tsitsi Masiyiwa, is more than a safari brand. Hearing her speak, it became clear that Batoka is a statement. Its lodges along the Zambezi, near Victoria Falls – Mosi-oa-Tunya, “the smoke that thunders” – are designed not only to showcase nature’s grandeur, but to place African voices, communities, and creativity at the center of the story. As she spoke about tracking lions, facing down a young bull elephant, and building Zambezi Sands as a conduit for life-changing experiences, I could feel the room shift. This wasn’t a glossy tourism pitch. It was a reclaiming. A reminder that for so long, our lands and cultures have been photographed, packaged, and sold – often without us. Batoka is her answer to that: a Black, female-owned safari lodge group that insists Africa will no longer just be the backdrop, but the author. For me, as an indigenous person, meeting her was deeply personal. It is rare to see someone who looks like you and shares parts of your story standing so confidently in global spaces, not apologizing for her roots, but building from them. She didn’t just talk about success; she talked about responsibility – the responsibility to hire locally, to invest in communities, to bring young people into decision-making, and to show the next generation that they belong in boardrooms, on panels, and in power. What struck me most was how present she was. Here is someone running major projects, building lodges that stretch across gorges, managing timelines and teams – and yet she takes the time to be in rooms like ours, in conversations that matter, listening to young voices. She didn’t speak at us; she spoke with us. She asked questions, made space for reflection, and reminded us that leadership isn’t about distance, but proximity. She also spoke honestly about fear and growth – about throwing yourself into the deep end, even when a project feels bigger than anything you’ve done before. Hearing that from someone of her calibre made my own doubts feel a little less heavy. If she can stand at the edge of something intimidating and still move forward, then maybe I can, too. What stayed with me long after was this: she doesn’t treat being young, female, and indigenous as obstacles to overcome. She treats them as assets – as lenses that allow her to build differently, care more deeply, and design experiences that honor both people and place. In a world that often tells people like us to “wait our turn,” she is a walking refusal of that script. Meeting Vimbai, and learning more about Batoka Africa, reminded me that our stories don’t have to be small or hidden. They can be bold, visible, and beautifully disruptive. And as she continues to build spaces that honor the land and uplift communities, she quietly extends an invitation to the rest of us: to step up, to take risks, and to believe that we, too, can do it. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin For the past three years, I’ve practiced what the Japanese call shinrin-yoku or forest bathing — unhurried walks in the woods, simply breathing, listening, and being present. I don’t go to set a personal record or reach a peak. I go to feel human again. Those hours among the trees have done wonders for my personal wellbeing: my thoughts slow down, my heartbeat follows the rhythm of the forest, and my worries shrink to their proper size. Every time I step into a trail, I’m reminded of how fragile this peace really is — and how directly it depends on the health of our forests. In the Philippines, nowhere is this more true than in the Sierra Madre, our longest mountain range and perhaps our most underappreciated protector. Stretching over 500 kilometers along the eastern side of Luzon, Sierra Madre is more than just a scenic landscape. It is a lifeline. Sierra Madre is often called the “backbone of Luzon,” but it is also its shield. When powerful typhoons roar in from the Pacific, it is Sierra Madre that first takes the hit, breaking the wind’s force and weakening the storms before they slam into the lowlands. Without this wall of mountains and forests, cities and towns—including Metro Manila—would face even more catastrophic flooding, landslides, and destruction. Imagine every typhoon season without Sierra Madre standing in the way. The disasters we already fear would be unimaginably worse. In a very real sense, countless Filipino lives and livelihoods are protected because those ridges and trees are still there. Yet this shield is under constant pressure. Illegal logging strips away tree cover that took decades, even centuries, to grow. Mining operations carve into slopes and poison rivers. Large, poorly planned projects threaten to fragment habitats and push wildlife to the brink. Every forest lost weakens the natural defenses that keep communities safe and ecosystems stable. My own experience with forest bathing has taught me that protecting places like Sierra Madre is not just an environmental issue — it is a deeply human one. Science already shows that time in nature lowers stress, calms the nervous system, improves focus, and even helps with depression and anxiety. I’ve felt that truth in my own body: the way a walk under tall trees can loosen a tight chest, or how birdsong can silence the endless noise in my head. When we protect forests, we are also protecting a vital source of mental and emotional healing. We are defending spaces where children can grow up knowing what a clear river looks like, where families can experience the quiet that no shopping mall can provide, and where future generations can discover that nature is not an abstract idea but a presence you can feel on your skin and in your lungs. This is why the defense of Sierra Madre must become a national priority, not just a niche concern for environmentalists or local communities. The mountain range supplies water to our farms and homes, moderates our climate, and shelters countless species of plants and animals, some found nowhere else on Earth. Indigenous peoples who have cared for these lands for generations depend on it for their culture and survival. If there is one lesson my years of forest bathing have driven home, it is this: we need to care for the Earth, for our planet, as if our own wellbeing depends on it — because it does. A damaged environment is not just a news headline; it is stress, sickness, and insecurity made visible. A healthy forest, on the other hand, is safety, food, water, and peace of mind. Protecting Sierra Madre at all cost is not an exaggeration; it is a statement of reality. This ancient range has stood guard over us for centuries, asking for nothing more than to be left standing. The least we can do now is to stand up for it in return — with our voices, our votes, and our everyday choices — so that the shield that protects us continues to protect generations yet to come. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin   If artificial intelligence now shapes how we learn, diagnose, farm, build, and govern, then the capacity to understand and improve it cannot be confined to a handful of well funded laboratories or private platforms. It must be a public capability, taught and practiced by students across the higher education system—and, increasingly, in advanced secondary programs. The state’s role is not merely to regulate the outputs of AI but to ensure that the next generation can study, test, and remake the technology itself. That requires a simple but radical commitment: give students real access to the tools of AI research—compute, data, mentorship, and open evaluation environments—under public rules that protect rights and widen participation. Three arguments make this obligation essential rather than optional. The first is democratic competence. AI systems are no longer curiosities on the edge of public life; they now mediate hiring, credit, welfare, education, and security. A polity can only govern what a critical mass of its citizens can interrogate. UNESCO’s first global guidance on generative AI in education framed the task plainly: education systems must build human capacity to use, critique, and co-create AI, not just consume it. Turning that principle into practice means enabling student researchers—not only faculty or industry—to probe model behavior, measure bias, and study failure modes on meaningful problems with meaningful resources. The second is economic and scientific dynamism. States that treat compute and data as shared research infrastructure are already lowering the cost of curiosity. In 2024, the United States launched the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot to broaden access to the compute, datasets, models, and training that non industry researchers and educators—students included—need to do serious work. The stated motivation was blunt: many researchers and educators lack the critical AI tools required to investigate fundamental questions and to train the next generation. When access is widened, ideas move from classroom to prototype, from prototype to publication, and from publication to start up. The third is strategic resilience. Concentration of advanced compute and training pipelines in a few firms and geographies creates dependencies that are unhealthy for science and sovereignty alike. Europe’s response has been to make supercomputing a shared public utility through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, which runs open calls so academics, public agencies, and companies can compete for time on some of the world’s fastest machines. This is less about prestige hardware than about cultivating a research commons where students learn by doing—on the same class of systems that power state of the art results—while subject to public accountability. Skeptics sometimes argue that students can learn enough with small models on laptops, and that the frontier should remain the responsibility of large labs. This view mistakes an introduction for an education. The Stanford AI Index has documented the rapid escalation in the cost and computational scale of training state of the art systems; if students never touch modern toolchains or evaluate contemporary models at realistic scales, their learning will lag the science they are supposed to steward. A healthy pipeline mixes both: frugal methods and theory on modest hardware, and capstone opportunities that expose students—under supervision—to industrial grade frameworks, datasets, and evaluation standards. It is instructive that countries seeking to accelerate their AI ecosystems are designing programs with students in mind. In March 2024, India approved its IndiaAI Mission, which explicitly finances a public AI compute infrastructure of “10,000 or more GPUs” via public private partnership, alongside datasets and capacity building that reach universities beyond the elite tier. The policy logic is straightforward: without affordable access, talent concentrates where resources already are; with access, talent and ideas surface where they are needed. Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 takes a similar view, pairing investments in compute and data with talent pathways that bring learners into research and deployment early. These are not rhetorical gestures; they are fiscal and institutional bets that widen the circle of those who can build and critique AI. None of this diminishes the need for guardrails; it heightens it. When states underwrite student access to models and compute, they must also require privacy by design practices, auditable logs, and assessment literacy. Here again, public guidance already exists. UNESCO urges countries to pair access with professional learning for educators, with clear policies on data protection and academic integrity. The lesson is to couple capacity with conscience: students should be trained to document data provenance, to publish model cards and evaluation reports, and to treat safety analysis as a first class research output rather than an afterthought. What, concretely, should governments do? They should stand up a shared national compute layer that allocates time to student teams through competitive, mentored calls; negotiate cloud credits and model licenses that universities can pool; curate sectoral data commons with clear licensing so students can work on real public problems; and fund open evaluations so replication counts. Crucially, access must reach institutions outside major capitals and research flagships. The purpose is not to chase prestige by training the largest models, but to democratize the capacity to ask and answer the right questions—about transparency, fairness, efficiency, reliability, and local relevance. The stakes are larger than “jobs of the future.” They concern the terms on which societies will know themselves. If AI remains a black box operated elsewhere, students will learn to accept or fear it. If, instead, the state helps them open the box—ethically, rigorously, and at scale—they will learn to improve it. That is the difference between a generation that imitates and a generation that invents. It is also the difference between governing AI and being governed by it. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin   If the Philippines aspires to be a producer rather than a passive consumer in the AI economy, it must treat compute, data, and connectivity as strategic infrastructure. Across Southeast Asia, peers are already moving at infrastructure scale: Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 centers shared national compute; Malaysia has partnered with Nvidia and YTL Power to set up AI supercomputing in Johor; and Indonesia is backing an Indosat–Nvidia AI center in Central Java. These are not pilots but platform bets that anchor research, entrepreneurship, and exportable digital services. The Philippines has begun to lay pieces of this foundation. The Department of Trade and Industry adopted the National AI Strategy Roadmap 2.0 on July 3, 2024 and launched the Center for AI Research (CAIR), supported by additional budget allocations. In parallel, private players have commissioned new capacity: PLDT’s VITRO Sta. Rosa—an “AI ready” hyperscale facility designed for up to 50 MW—Amazon’s Manila Local Zone to cut latency for cloud workloads, and Equinix’s entry via the acquisition (and in 2025, completion) of three data centers to deepen interconnection. What is missing is not momentum but a coherent plan to stitch these assets into a national AI infrastructure. The economic case is straightforward. AI will not displace the Philippines’ services engine if the country upgrades the factors of production that make its IT BPM sector globally competitive. That sector closed 2024 with 1.82 million jobs and $38 billion in revenue; its next productivity surge depends on secure access to model training, fine tuning, and inference at scale, close to data and users. Domestic capacity lowers latency and data egress costs and, crucially, enables compliance with the National Privacy Commission’s model contractual clauses for cross border transfers under the Data Privacy Act. Firms that can certify their pipelines as privacy-preserving and locality-aware will capture higher value tasks rather than see them arbitraged to jurisdictions with better provisioned compute. Sovereignty and resilience add a second, non negotiable rationale. The Philippines repeatedly tops the WorldRiskIndex as the country most exposed to natural hazards, a status that turns AI for early warning, logistics, and relief from a luxury into a necessity. Keeping critical models, datasets, and decision support systems onshore—and caching them at the edge—reduces dependence on international links that are vulnerable to typhoons and seismic events. The state’s National Fiber Backbone, launched in April 2024, supplies the terrestrial spine to move data among government, universities, and carriers; an AI infrastructure strategy should prioritize GPU clusters and secure data lakes on this backbone, with mirrored sites across islands to avoid single points of failure. Energy economics further strengthen the case. Data centers are power hungry, but they can also be demand anchors for firm, clean generation and grid upgrades. The Department of Energy targets renewables at 35 percent of generation by 2030 and 50 percent by 2040; setting up AI campuses alongside new solar, wind, storage, and transmission can lower long run costs while hardening the grid. With the Philippines bearing Southeast Asia’s second highest electricity tariffs, the only path to cost competitive AI is to fuse compute expansion with the country’s accelerating pipeline of clean energy projects, including the recently announced UAE–Masdar investment program. Critically, the Philippines should exploit locational advantages that are already materializing. The country sits on an expanding web of subsea cables: PLDT has landed APRICOT branches at Baler and Digos, while the Bifrost trans Pacific system has reached Davao. Proximity to these landing stations, together with Manila’s growing cloud edge and interconnection fabric, can minimize latency for regional users and attract AI tenants whose workloads straddle Asia and the United States. Policy should designate “compute connectivity corridors” around these nodes and align land use, permitting, and spectrum policy to reduce friction for both operators and researchers. Governance must move in lockstep with investment. The Data Privacy Act and the NPC’s transfer clauses provide the legal scaffolding for sovereign AI “trust zones” in finance, health, public records, and justice. Executive Order 18 on Green Lanes should be used to fast track data center builds and to standardize municipal approvals and rights of way. Public procurement can create anchor demand: a shared “GovCompute” program for agencies and state universities would consolidate spending, enforce cybersecurity baselines, and keep research grade compute accessible beyond a handful of corporations. The choice, then, is not between buying cloud services abroad or building at home; it is about sequencing both so that domestic capacity becomes the gravitational center for high value work. A credible AI infrastructure strategy—explicit targets for national compute, a siting plan tied to renewables and cable landings, and a regulatory regime that lowers frictions while raising trust—would convert today’s scattered wins into a durable advantage. If the Philippines acts with that clarity, it will graduate from renting other people’s platforms to exporting its own AI enabled services and tools. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin On Nov. 6, I stood on the One Young World stage at ICM Messe Munich, looking out at 2,500 young leaders from 190 countries. The room fell quiet as I introduced myself in Kinaray-a, my mother tongue from Western Visayas in the Philippines. It was a short greeting, but for me it felt like bringing my whole community into a space where our language is almost never heard. I did not grow up imagining myself on a global stage. As a child, I wrestled with a speech defect—words with the letter “s” made me stumble. My playmates mimicked my accent and my stutter. To them, I was a small, round, stuttering nerd. I became insecure, but I kept going to school. I learned to measure progress not in perfect consonants but in courage: one breath, one word, one more try. On nights when my tongue felt locked, my mother would whisper proverbs in Kinaray-a. Slowly, my mouth would loosen to the sounds—familiar, ours. After decades of practice and stubborn repetition, my mouth finally caught up with my mind. The first time I addressed a room in English without stuttering, I felt a door swing open to a future I had never allowed myself to picture. That journey taught me something I now see everywhere in the digital world: words are not equal. Language is not fair. Today, that unfairness is embedded in our technology. The world has about 7,100 languages. Over 40 percent are endangered, and without serious intervention, as many as 95 percent could disappear by the 22nd century. Yet the digital tools shaping our lives overwhelmingly serve just a tiny fraction of these languages—roughly a few dozen that have huge amounts of written and digital content. In the Philippines, we have 175 languages. Fifty-nine are already considered endangered. Two have gone silent. The vast majority do not exist in the AI systems and platforms that claim to “speak the world’s languages.” When I tried using one of the most widely known AI tools in my own language, Kinaray-a, it simply did not understand me. That moment was more than a technical limitation; it was a reminder of who is seen as “worth understanding” by our technology. How can we call technology that understands less than one percent of the world’s languages fair and responsible? In 2023, I decided I couldn’t just point at the problem; I had to help build a solution. I founded NightOwl AI to safeguard linguistic heritage and ensure that every language can be digitally represented—especially endangered and low-resource languages with complex morphology that are often dismissed as “too difficult” or “too small to matter.” Our AI-powered platform focuses on what communities actually need. We provide real-time translation, document oral speech, create transcriptions, and digitize archived texts. We design everything to work both online and offline, because your ability to preserve your language should not depend on how strong your internet connection is that day. And we work with communities as partners—co-creating, collecting data with consent, and centering pride rather than extraction. Our goal is simple: enable elders to teach, children to learn, and communities to access their own words every day, with dignity, online or offline. What started in the Philippines is now reaching far beyond our shores. After a successful pilot supporting Tagalog, Cebuano, and Ilokano, we are scaling across Asia, Africa, and Latin America—anywhere linguistic diversity is at risk. In just two years, we have translated more than two million words across 22 languages. Our volunteer network now spans 20 countries, from Colombia to Nigeria to the United Kingdom. Together, we have preserved oral stories and texts in Tagalog, Karay-a, Urdu, Bisaya, and more. We have digitized archives from the 1930s that might otherwise remain fragile and forgotten. We have partnered with media organizations to pilot AI that delivers news in four regional Philippine languages. We are co-creating open dictionaries with communities and working with an international team on a framework that puts language inclusion at the very heart of AI development. NightOwl AI has been recognized by She Shapes AI, joined the Worldwide Alliance for AI and Democracy, and become a UN-recognized civil society partner. These recognitions matter not as trophies, but as keys—they open doors to collaboration, visibility, and resources. And that is where One Young World becomes truly life changing. For me, One Young World is not just another conference. It is an environment that accelerates transformation. It opens doors—to opportunities, to conversations, and to a community of game changers who turn a five-minute hallway chat into a real partnership. In Munich, I met a broadcaster who wants to localize news beyond the dominant national language, a linguist documenting verbs in an endangered tongue, an engineer building offline-first apps for rural schools, and an entrepreneur looking for concrete ways to invest in local data and language inclusion. These are not abstract “stakeholders;” they are potential co-builders. One Young World compresses the world into a few intense days, where a single shared coffee can lead to a pilot project, and a question from the audience can become the seed of a new program. It is a place where a greeting in Kinaray-a is not a footnote but the start of a conversation. It is a community that makes you feel less alone in your mission, because you are surrounded by young leaders equally obsessed with solving “impossible” problems. But inspiration and community are only the beginning. If we truly want responsible AI, we must start with inclusion—not as a slogan, but as a design principle. That means building local language support from day one, not as a future “nice to have.” It means investing in affordable internet, devices, and locally stewarded data. It means designing for low bandwidth, erratic electricity, and classrooms where one phone might be shared by many students. It means rejecting extractive “data grabs” and treating communities as co-authors, co-owners, and experts in their own languages. In my speech, I said: “For AI and technology to be used responsibly, they first need to be more inclusive. This starts with local language integration then extends to affordable internet, devices, and local data. We can debate AI’s power and risks, but access is a pre-requisite for responsible use.” I stand by that. We cannot call AI transformative if it only transforms life for those already privileged by language, geography, and infrastructure. (Read complete text at www.mb.com.ph ) This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin We don’t mint new human rights lightly. But we should add one now: the right to access capable, safe AI. Around the world, language is the gateway to opportunity; AI is a universal language machine that translates, tutors, summarizes, designs, and reasons across barriers of literacy, disability, and geography. When a technology is this general and transformative, withholding it isn’t neutral—it sorts people into those who can participate fully in education, the economy, civic life, and those who can’t. Human rights aren’t about gadgets; they’re about capabilities. The rights to education, work, information, and expression presume practical means to exercise them. Increasingly, AI is that means. A student in a district without a chemistry teacher can still learn stoichiometry with an AI tutor. A farmer can ask for pest diagnoses in her language. A deaf job seeker can craft tailored cover letters and rehearse interviews. A nurse can turn jargon into plain-language discharge notes. Accessibility isn’t a side benefit; it’s the essence of the case. There’s also a fairness imperative. As institutions embed AI in hiring, credit, government services, and healthcare, denying people their own access strips them of agency. Without the ability to query, contest, or audit algorithmic decisions, due process becomes abstract. Personal access to AI is a counterweight: It lets individuals check claims, model alternatives, and understand impacts. Rights carry responsibilities, yes, but empowerment cannot be contingent on income, postcode, or bandwidth. If systems will judge us, people need tools to understand and answer back. Recognizing AI access as a right does not mean unregulated, unlimited use. It means setting a floor: affordable, reliable, privacy-preserving AI for every person; transparency about risks; and remedies when harms occur. It means public options through libraries, schools, and clinics; protections against surveillance; open standards so local languages and cultures are first-class; and sustained funding so researchers and civil society can hold power to account. It also means a right to opt out and to reach a human—especially in high-stakes contexts like health, finance, and justice. Skeptics say we survived without AI. We also survived without electricity and the internet until those became prerequisites for full participation. The cost of exclusion compounds: Children learn less, patients understand less, workers earn less, and democracies deliberate less. Inclusion compounds too: creativity unlocked, productivity broadened, dignity affirmed. When benefits scale exponentially, the harms of unequal access scale as well. This is not a trophy for technology companies. It’s a societal commitment to equip people with the means to learn, speak, work, and be heard in a world increasingly run by code. Recognizing the right is the first step. Building it—through policy, public investment, safeguards, and ethical design—is the work ahead. The question isn’t whether AI will shape the future, but whether everyone will have a say in shaping it. Rights exist for that purpose. Let’s extend them to meet the moment: access that is universal, meaningful, and genuinely empowering. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.

Originally published in Manila Bulletin AI promises to “know” everything—but who decides what can be known, and by whom? As a young leader, I am honored to be part of One Young World’s Indigenous Advisory Circle and to work alongside thousands of Indigenous youth who are advancing data sovereignty in our communities. For us, data is not raw material. It carries story, ceremony, and responsibility. When algorithms scrape the internet and call it “open,” they often ingest our culture without consent. The fastest way to make AI safer is also the most ethical: let Indigenous peoples govern our own data—starting with youth who will live with the consequences the longest. Indigenous Data Sovereignty means our peoples decide what information about us—our lands, languages, kinship, and knowledge—gets collected, how it is stored, who can use it, and under what conditions. Consent is not a checkbox; it is an ongoing relationship with obligations on both sides. In practice, that looks like community-controlled rules for collection, access, use, sharing, and benefit across the full data lifecycle, with the authority to say yes, no, or not yet. When our data is treated as ownerless, harm follows. Sacred songs are mislabeled as “folklore” and fed into models that remix them into novelty. Location and ecological records expose sacred sites and hunting grounds to trespass and exploitation. Health or justice datasets, shared without governance, become tools of surveillance. “Open” is mistaken for “free to take,” and our languages and teachings are used to train systems that return nothing to the people who created them. Even well-intentioned platforms erase us by standardizing our names and territories until identity is rounded off for the sake of accuracy. Across One Young World’s global community, Indigenous youth are already building a better path. Community data trusts hold datasets under our own governance so access can be time-bound, purpose-limited, and revocable. Traditional Knowledge Labels travel with cultural materials in digital spaces, signaling protocols such as attribution, seasonal use, or restrictions on derivatives, so context and consent remain visible. Free, prior, and informed consent applies to datasets just as it does to land: before collection or training, proponents explain purpose, risks, benefits, and alternatives in the right language and on our timelines, and communities decide. In language technology, young developers co-create keyboards, speech tools, and archives with elders, keeping audio under community keys and ensuring any future model training returns benefits to the language community. Guardians and rangers use sensors and drones to protect rivers and forests while masking sensitive geolocations and encrypting stores so raw data cannot be scraped into external systems. These are not hypotheticals; they are practical safeguards that let innovation move faster because trust is built in. Now the responsibility shifts to those who profit from data. If you build models, platforms, or “open” repositories, adopt binding governance agreements with recognized Indigenous entities, with clear purposes, retention limits, review rights, and remedies. Do not train on Indigenous content without documented consent, and honor “do-not-train” defaults and TK Labels technically, not just rhetorically, with post-training removal pathways that actually work. Share value through revenue, jobs, scholarships, and paid roles for community members, especially youth, in research, engineering, and governance. Fund community-controlled infrastructure—data trusts, local servers, connectivity, and Indigenous data labs—so we are not dependent on your cloud to access our own materials. Build cultural safety into release processes, with Indigenous youth involved in red-team exercises and the power to halt launches when risks outweigh benefits. Governments and funders must keep pace. Make FPIC for data the law, procure only systems that demonstrate compliance with Indigenous governance where relevant, and back multi-year, community-led programmes that train youth in data science, governance, and cybersecurity alongside Elders’ knowledge. I write this as someone who sees daily the ingenuity of our peers across continents. We are not asking for a pause on progress. We are offering a way to build technology worthy of the world it shapes. Data sovereignty is youth sovereignty. If you want AI that is safer, fairer, and more useful, put Indigenous youth at the table with the authority to govern our data and resource the infrastructures that make that authority real. The choice is simple: continue extraction 2.0, or move with us to reciprocity, consent, and shared benefit. This opinion column is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and redistribute this content, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and original source.