To AI,
or not
to AI.
That is the question.
Ryan Tan Yu Co-Founder & COO, Mata Technologies Inc.
Technology & Innovation Forum · CCCI · CBM 2026 · 18 June 2026 · Waterfront
01
When to AI
and when not to AI
Tradition versus innovation, and the lane we pick throughout history.
A fight as old as progress
Innovation is still undefeated.
Tradition versus innovation is not a new fight — it plays out in every generation. And every tool we now lean on, we once resisted.
And yet
— but that doesn’t mean we discard tradition.
“Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.”
“He who does not look back at where he came from will never reach his destination.”
— José Rizal, probably
Dr. José Rizal
We have seen this movie before
Yesterday’s heresy is today’s default.
1990s
The web
Dismissed as “brochureware,” a fad. The skeptics became the case studies.
1980s
The ATM
Supposed to end the teller. Teller jobs rose for two decades instead.
1970s
The calculator
It retired the slide rule — never the math teachers.
The lane we pick
Wait for the future — or shape it? Passenger, or driver. Spectator, or author.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
— Alan Kay, 1971
Automate production. Never origination.
AI as a tool
Net-positive · it compounds up
Leverage, speed, reach. The machine takes the grind so the human can do more of the work only a human can do.
AI as substitute for talent
Net-negative · it compounds down
Dishonesty → misrepresentation → eroded trust → diluted identity. Each shortcut stacks — and outlives the saving.
Where they
went wrong
The case studies and cautionary tales — what most got wrong.
When the world turned to AI —
— it shipped slop.
2024 & 2025
Coca-Cola
Rebuilt its beloved Christmas ad with AI. The world called it “soulless.” Then did it again — cheaper, panned harder.
Dilution of identity
Glasgow, 2024
Willy’s Chocolate Experience
AI images sold a wonderland. Families got a bare warehouse. Police came. Now in the Museum of Failure.
Misrepresentation
2023
Sports Illustrated
Ran articles under fake writers with AI headshots for sale online. Questioned, the authors vanished.
Dishonesty
AI promised paradise. Reality delivered a warehouse.
Stranded at the gate
A couple missed their trip — ChatGPT got the entry rules wrong.
A hot spring that never existed
An AI travel post sent tourists to “Weldborough Hot Springs,” Tasmania. There are none.
The Eiffel Tower… in Beijing
A travel AI invented landmarks and routes that don’t exist.
~90% of AI-generated itineraries contain errors.
Source: SEO Travel study, 2025 — 100 ChatGPT-generated itineraries across the world’s top city destinations.
And on the topic of dishonesty
Blaming AI for layoffs — and the math nobody says out loud.
AI-washing: dressing ordinary work up as “AI” to look innovative — or to justify cutting people. Regulators have already started fining it.
The honest math
Keep all five — and do 25×.
Multiply your people. Don’t subtract them.
📈GraphicYour “multiply” visual
The lazy math
One does 5× with AI… cut four, keep one, pocket the savings.
Short-term saving, long-term shrink.
📉GraphicYour “subtract” visual
Where we
are now
What this shift means for a culture like ours.
Terrain dictates the game
Same tools. Different games.
China
Scale & speed — copy, iterate, ship.
vs
Japan
Craft & discipline — monozukuri, kaizen.
Europe
Industrial B2B — SAP, ASML, Dassault.
vs
India / Indonesia
Mass B2C — Gojek, Shopee, Jio.
The West
Mature, deep-capital markets.
vs
The Philippines
Same market & resources — different maturity.
Where we actually stand
Young. Fluent. Fast. And mispriced.
25.7
median age — among the world’s youngest workforces
PSA, 2020 Census
#2
in Asia for English — EF index 578, above India’s 504
EF EPI 2025
$40B
IT-BPM, 1.9M jobs — roughly 8% of national GDP
IBPAP, 2024
70→34%
cost as the reason clients pick us — the cheap-labor edge is thinning
IBPAP industry survey
We were never just cheap. And cheap is exactly the part AI erases first.
Cebu has lived both answers
We’ve been the passenger. We’ve been the driver.
1998
Furniture · the lesson
Once the country’s furniture capital.
The commodity, volume work bled out to automation and cheaper hubs. But design-led Cebu — Kenneth Cobonpue — beat the world on craft, not price.
TODAY
BPO · the live call
$40B · 1.9M jobs · 8% of GDP.
Our biggest edge — now standing at the very same fork, facing AI. Passenger, or driver?
04
How Cebu
answered
AI as a tool — never a substitute for talent.
When it’s a tool — done right, here
Cebu already knows how.
Cebu City
Human artists for the ASEAN artworks
Chose human artists — no AI — for the summit artworks. An institution refusing the tool, on purpose, for identity.
Cebu Province
Virtual Maps
Drawn by human hands, then enshrined in technology. Origination human. Production digital.
Cebuanimation
Real animators, real tools
Trains animators on Wacom and Toei pipelines — instead of replacing them with a prompt.
📷Wide photo stripA human artist mid-work — ASEAN mural / Virtual Maps drawing / Cebuanimation studio
— Cebu went the other way
Roots, not shortcuts.
Genuine, not generated
Virtual Maps — real places, mapped by human hands for Cebu Province. Not hallucinated. Verified.
72 hours, done by hand
To welcome ASEAN’s delegates in January, the deadline begged for GenAI. We drew it by hand — because Cebu is a UNESCO Creative City of Design.
Upskill, not replace
When AI gutted low-value animation, Cebu trained its animators up-market — Cebuanimation.
Every one of these is the same choice: the human originates, the tool only produces.
Our play
Don’t compete on what AI copies. Compete on what it can’t.
Cebu to the World — “experiences the world returns to remember.”
Amplify identity with the tools. Don’t let them dilute it.
A Cebuano truth
“It’s the Indian, not the pana.”
It’s the archer, not the bow. The tool never made the marksman.
If your work is 20% ideation and 80% labor, and AI saves you the 80%, don’t pocket the difference. Pour it back into the bucket.
The tool got faster. The thinking got bigger.
So — to AI, or not to AI?
We don’t reject innovation.
We embrace it — as the driver, never the passenger.
Because even with every tool, nothing beats human creativity.
Up next — beyond tools and automation, into craft and innovation:
the SolutionsFest Showcase, from Cebu’s own builders.
Ryan Tan Yu · Mata Technologies Inc.
