"I dug my own grave": Filipina loses job to the AI she helped train

A Filipino woman named Lisa (not her real name, changed at her request) started writing professionally straight out of university, spent years working as a freelancer, and eventually landed a staff position at a multinational company. She says she always met her deadlines and delivered quality work — in her view, artificial intelligence simply wasn't necessary for what she did. She shared her story with the BBC.

Eight months into the job — just a month before she was due to be moved onto a permanent contract — she was let go. A few months earlier, her agency had assigned her team to edit AI-generated texts. As it later turned out, the employees' expertise and writing style were actually being used to train the AI to imitate the way they wrote.

"We dug our own grave"

"It feels like I dug my own grave. We were the ones training the AI that ended up replacing us," Lisa admitted. Many other employees were laid off alongside her — all of them received enhanced severance packages in exchange for signing non-disclosure agreements. That's why they're keeping their real names hidden, worried it could hurt their chances of finding work in the same field in the future.

The outlet points out that the Philippines, with its fast-growing economy, is exactly where the question of mass AI-driven job automation feels most urgent — especially since these very jobs have long served as a pathway into the middle class for locals.

The outsourcing industry under threat

The Cubao district in Manila is one of the country's major business hubs, home to offices of international companies offering a wide range of outsourcing services. For more than two decades, districts like this one have stood as a symbol of the country's economic success.

But as AI technology spreads, the outsourcing industry — which employs roughly 1.9 million people, according to the BBC — has turned out to be especially vulnerable. According to the International Labour Organization, a specialized UN agency, more than 12 million Filipinos work in fields that generative AI could potentially disrupt.

Experts believe many jobs are more likely to be transformed than eliminated outright. Even so, entire categories of services in the Philippines and elsewhere are set to take a serious hit.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz