Aiyaiyai, AI!

I was supposed to attend the “AI Summit 2026: Golden Era of Discovery” hosted by the Cornell Club of the Philippines last Saturday. With the promise of a “practical AI seminar” and dinner as added enticement, I eagerly signed up. But when I saw the list of topics to be tackled by “expert speakers,” I had second thoughts: AI value stack, digital & physical AI, vibe coding to agentic orchestration… the only topic that could apply to me was “a practical guide on what to use, how to use & when to use for personal AI and enterprise AI.”

I admit I am a technophobe. I write with pen (sometimes pencil) on paper rather than on a computer; I list my appointments in a book and my to-do and grocery lists on scratch paper (I re-use). But I am trying to ease myself into tech. I’m discovering how smart my phone can be (sometimes though not so smart). Not too long ago I got acquainted with Siri, and though we’re not quite BFFs yet, she’s been very helpful, especially when I’m driving. I don’t use ChatGPT; since writing is my stock in trade I’m not about to surrender the task to an algorithm.

And now there’s AI, which can do wonderful as well as horrible things. My friend Francis does wonders manipulating photos; he has made me an empress, a taitai in a qipao and a Chinese opera star. Google AI certainly helps with research and fact checking. AI is developing in leaps and bounds, with China threatening to outpace the US in coming out with ever more powerful models. While ChatGPT now has a 5.5 model, China has come out with a GLM 5.2, and is making it available to the public for free.

Faced with what seems to be inevitable, I decided to give AI a try. The other week I felt a severe pain in the left side of my abdomen. Any movement – walking, sitting down or getting up, laughing – caused pain. Being a grin-and-bear-it person I put off going to a doctor. In the meantime, in a lightbulb moment, I thought I’d consult AI.

I typed in my symptoms, clicked a few options… and got my diagnosis: diverticulitis or kidney stones. Going into more detail, kidney stones was ruled out, so diverticulitis it is, the presidential ailment, no less. Doctor AI suggested a two-week regimen of antibiotics which, it warned, I must complete even if the pain goes away before that.

Averse to popping pills, especially antibiotics, I decided to reach out to my goddaughter, a developmental pediatrician who, after patiently going through my symptoms with a couple of additional questions, said it could be muscle spasms since the pain was felt just beneath the skin and not deeper; I should monitor if it worsens before doing anything drastic. “Doctor AI is scaring you,” she said reassuringly. By the third day it was more of a discomfort than pain; muscle spasm it was – score one for the human doctor.

Health care is one area where AI can have significant positive impact. Already AI is making great strides in diagnostics (maybe not that great in my case). A 2025 Microsoft project showed its diagnostic tool achieved 85 percent accuracy in complex medical cases, vs a 20 percent average for human doctors. With the WHO projecting a worldwide shortage of 11 million health care workers by 2030 – that’s around 4.5 billion people without health services – AI can move “beyond expertise in diagnostics…into areas like symptom triage and treatment planning,” making “new generative AI products and services available to millions of consumers and patients,” VP for health at Microsoft AI Dr. Dominic King said.

Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go in this regard. I tried the DOH teleconsultation service Hotline 1552 and got a recording telling me “your call cannot be completed as dialed, please check the number and dial again.” The 1555 number connects you to the DOH, with a long spiel on data privacy and options up to “press 5,” covering hospitalization referral to substance abuse and other concerns. Guess we still have to sort out the tech part before we venture into AI diagnostics.

Contrary to the general fear, AI will not make humans irrelevant. Jeff Bezos of Amazon said at a recent tech conference in Paris that rather than cause massive unemployment (although Amazon and his other companies have significantly downsized), AI will create a new demand for human creators and builders. Instead of outright replacing human workers, AI will enable workers to do better and do more in less time. AI can take over routine, monotonous tasks to allow human workers to engage in more creative endeavors.

“The future isn’t about replacing humans; it’s about amplifying them,” Microsoft chief product officer for AI experiences Aparma Chennapragada said. She sees AI becoming “digital coworkers,” enabling human/AI teams to tackle bigger creative problems and deliver results faster. Her advice: “Don’t compete with AI, but focus on learning how to work alongside it.”

Great advice, and I for one am taking it. While AI did not write this column for me, it helped greatly with research. So while I am not throwing away my pencils just yet, I’m henceforth going to count on working with a little help from my friend AI.