Last year, I wrote about the hybrid space between a person and an AI and named it kasangkapwa (companion in the journey toward shared identity). Watching my students build with agentic AI this trimester, I realized I need to pay attention to a different relationship.
These past two weeks, my undergraduate class in Management in the Digital World held its final presentations. Six groups, each embedded with an actual partner organization, mostly micro- and small enterprises, each running an action research project around an AI-assisted prototype. Group projects involved prototyping customized queuing and point-of-sale systems, sales pipelines, inventory forecasting, entrepreneurial incubator dashboards, knowledge management systems, and invoice processing. These are all undergraduate business students. Almost none of them code.
Two years ago, this output was out of reach. One year ago, it would have needed an engineering elective and a semester of suffering. This trimester, with agentic AI platforms that plan, execute, and revise with minimal supervision, it needed a good brief, a few weekends, and the discipline to check the machine’s work.
Mid-presentation, an Eraserheads line from their song “Para sa Masa” (For the Masses) lodged in my head and would not leave: “Pinilit kong iahon ka, ngunit ayaw mo namang sumama.” (I tried so hard to save you, but you didn’t even want to go with me.)
