Given that Filipinos are famously intellectually-stunted as it is, moves by the Philippine government to block Grok (the artificial intelligence (AI) app within X — the social media site formerly known as “Twitter” — should be a welcome development. At the moment, the Philippines is reportedly exploring options around this but under the pretext of “cracking down on sexually explicit content generated by Grok on the social media platform X”. This also follows similar moves by governments in the region…
Indonesia temporarily blocked Grok on Saturday due to the risk of AI-generated pornographic content, becoming the first country to deny access to the AI tool.
Malaysia’s communications regulator said on Tuesday that it will take legal action against X due to concerns over user safety in relation to Grok.
Hardly surprising considering that porn has long been a consistent early-adapter of technology to deliver its products. This recent use of AI to generate porn at scale is a no-brainer as it significantly further lowers the barriers of entry into the age-old business of serving sexual gratification to a mass audience (just as videotape in the 1970s, camera phones in the late 1990s, and on-demand video streaming in the early 2000s did).
Then again, the use of AI to deliver porn (or sexualise kids) is the least of Filipinos’ problems. Filipinos, after all are amongst the world’s biggest consumers of Internet porn and sexualising kids is par for the course in Pinoy showbiz. The bigger problem is the Philippines’ galloping intellectual bankruptcy. Easy availability to hi-tech thinking crutches is likely contributing significantly to this mounting social problem. AI is a far more insidious beast as its chatbots get better and better at mimicking — through clever conversation — what appears to be sound thinking while putting up an unshakable veneer of self-confidence.
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The consistent self-confidence with which AI chatbots go about their business with the hapless humans who engage them is the Dunning-Kruger Effect taken to its state-of-the-machine ultimate. A key aspect of this describes the way people who know little about a subject believe — perhaps as a result of an underdeveloped capacity for self-awareness — that they are far more knowledgeable than they actually are. Machines, however, don’t simply “believe”. They are engineered to confidently deliver “knowledgeable” conversation on any subject covered by their training datasets. Small surprise considering machines are not self-aware.
Imagine then such a society — of Dunning-Kruger people dependent on Dunning-Kruger machines to do the their thinking!
The only way Filipinos can take back their ability to think is to stop cheating on their homework. The means to cheat is now so ubiquitous that cheating has become normal — and thinking will, as such, remain stunted. If Filipinos are serious about treating this national-scale stunting as a true crisis that demands crisis-management solutions, that puts any decision to ban AI chatbots in the Philippines in its proper perspective. The only way Filipinos can regain their ability to think is to start using their brains. That won’t happen until you take them off their strollers.
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why deny it ?
in the future, thinking will be obsolete for most people anyway. pinoys are just ahead of the curve on this one, even more than in the consumption of porn.
dictatorships, benevolent or otherwise, will be the norm .
choice is illusion. AI will be your slave, your lover, and your God.
why resist it?
AI in its current state would make way better laws than the current Filipino politicians. If AI enacted laws and policy changes the country would improve greatly.
AI in general is pretty great, but you need a solid educational foundation to read and comprehend and decipher the useless from the useful…. And well…. that doesn’t happen in 90% of Filipino Elementary and High Schools
AI , right now , is 10x smarter than any pinoy barangay captain.
and far better than the average mayor, or congressman at policy making.
now, we need mayors. but what need is there for congress ?
we dont really need the dumb 90% , let these ifiots be.
what needs to happen is the smart 10% , the leaders, to make the right policy decisions and get government in the right direction and STOP STEALING THE FUKKIN’ MONEY.
AI is ultimately a tool that doesn’t possess an inherent moral or ethical quality. Advocating to ban Grok/ChatGPT/DeepSeek etc because youngsters use it to cheat on schoolwork or for porn is ironically a band-aid move that we often criticize the Philippine government of doing.
We’d have to take a step back and ponder why such a religious country that spends 4 months each year celebrating Christmas and has a bunch of fiestas dedicated to Catholic saints, also has a rampant problem of porn and sexual addiction? Why dabbling in promiscuity in junior or senior high is seen as a rite of passage for Pinoy boys to prove their masculinity (alongside circumcision), why the word “bembang” has entered Gen Z colloquialism. Generalize this to other social vices such as drinking, drugs and gambling.
As for the problem of intellectual deficiency and cheating, they are rooted in the faulty public school system as well as Filipino culture normalizing cheating, dishonesty and lack of work ethic (which I already talked about in length in another recent post). Of course if I were in control of the nationwide public school system I would discourage the use of AI in Grades 1 through 10—but in the context of other aspects of the teaching method being reformed such that schoolchildren would already learn enough from their textbooks and lectures.
But how would 7- and 8-year-old kids learn effectively if they have to wake up at 4:30 every morning for their shift? If their teacher deliberately forces the children’s parents and guardians to be the secondary teacher at home to do their assignments? (especially when the parents themselves had less education than their child) Or if conditions at home are already hostile for a proper learning environment to begin with?
[Side note]
Finland got it right with not assigning homework to younger schoolchildren at all. Less overall stress for the kids, and it also allows their minds to absorb the day’s lessons. And for the morning shift pupils they have the extra time to nap in the afternoon.
Also we have to reorganize the class schedules themselves. No one in their right mind would think that cramming 7 subjects in 5 hours per day is effective in helping schoolkids to learn. 3 or 4 class periods is better, then have each subject be held 2 or 3 times per week. Let’s say English is taught on Tue and Thu for 90 mins. Combine this with the 1st reform and you get the students being able to do everything within 60 to 90 minutes per subject daily.
These reforms are doable in the Philippines’ public school system even with deficient infrastructure (requiring two shifts and 30-40 students per section). You can’t build new schools overnight but fixing how teachers approach their classes is a lot more practicable.
Agree 100% banning AI is a band aid solution that does not address the more profound roots of Filipino intellectual bankruptcy. However it is evident that having AI readily accessible to such a stunted public does not help and actually exacerbates the intellectual atrophy that has already taken hold on the Philippines.
We need to stop the bleeding first before we start treating the actual injury.
Just like “freedom” and “democracy” turned out to be a blowtorch in the hands of a two year old in Philippine politics, AI is a V8 being driven by an unlicensed adolescent. You need to take away the tool of destruction first before you could treat the mental illness that put such small hands on big tools to begin with.
How do they explain paywalls when their businesses run on interoperability that gives life to what we call AI? How are we going to step back or revert and take a different approach? It seems the more advanced technologies become, the more it forces us to look at ourselves and our ability to function beyond borders.
other than being an open air brothel, age gap wasps with pilipinas, cellular phone addiction, and known for their lust of the debased-degnerate us empire, this can be a great thing! Keep being the laughing stock of Asia.
Gooo Failipines!