AI is unlocking human potential in new ways

ILLUSTRATION BY RUTH MACAPAGAL

MANILA, Philippines — Be your own boss.” It’s a phrase seen as a motivational and increasingly corny slogan.

But artificial intelligence (AI), the great disruptor of the 21st-century workplace, is seen to breathe new life to that phrase and upend what it means, too.

According to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Report, it’s not enough for businesses and organizations to just live with AI; it requires transforming how we see, even mean by, an organization.

In the age of AI, organizations should “blend machine intelligence with human judgment [and build] systems that are AI-operated but human-led,” Microsoft says in the report, based on survey data of 31,000 workers across 31 countries and a host of other indicators.

“Like the Industrial Revolution and the internet era, this transformation will take decades to reach its full promise and involve broad technological, societal and economic change,” it adds.

AI as teammate

In this world, being your own boss means “directing” AI agents, which the report defines as AI-powered systems that “can reason, plan and act to complete tasks or entire workflows autonomously with human oversight at key moments.”

It’s not even enough to adopt it as a tool that can free humans from the drudgery of daily work. Currently, AI tools are seen as helpers—but in Microsoft’s vision, these should be viewed much more akin to a teammate.

The report also shines a spotlight on the rise of the so-called “agent boss,” individuals who build, delegate or manage tasks to AI agents.

As a result, this increased importance of agents frees human beings “to amplify their impact—working smarter, scaling faster and taking control of their career in the age of AI,” suggests the report.

READ: Creativity and innovation in the age of AI

It also requires know-how to work with AI. Treating them with a thought partner mindset, the report points out that employees have to learn a lot in the AI-dominated workplace.

These skills include: learning how to iterate, or to converse repeatedly, with AI; correct prompting with context and intent; and refining outputs—steering a conversation with agents, pushing back when needed.

This is not a plan for the future: Human-agent teams are here, and 28 percent of managers worldwide surveyed consider hiring AI workforce managers tasked with leading these hybrid teams.

Meanwhile, 32 percent of respondents plan to hire specialists to build these agents in the next year and a half, enabling them to automate complex tasks. And 36 percent of organization leaders think they’ll be managing these agent systems within five years.

Pivotal year

These dizzying changes are part and parcel of organizations that Microsoft calls “Frontier Firms.” These are agile companies that the report describes as powered by “on-demand intelligence and hybrid teams of humans and AI agents.”

In the Philippines, 86 percent of organizational leaders surveyed see 2025 as a pivotal year for their company to rethink their strategies and operations toward becoming a Frontier Firm.

“Today, working without a computer feels unimaginable; tomorrow we’ll feel the same about AI—with every employee using it as instinctively as they use laptops, smartphones or the internet each day,” the report says.

Filipino business leaders surveyed in the report say that in the future, productivity must increase. Employees, however, also say that they don’t have the time and energy to perform their best.

READ: Are we ready for AI?

AI has emerged to bridge the gap in an increasingly unsustainable way to work, Microsoft says.

“With intelligence now scalable and on demand, Filipino leaders have a unique opportunity to close the productivity gap and reimagine workforce capacity,” Peter Maquera, Microsoft Philippines CEO, explains in a statement.

“AI is not replacing human potential—it’s unlocking it in entirely new ways.”

Human touch

Those surveyed say that AI agents can take over many tasks in the workplace, especially those tasks in marketing, customer service, internal communications and data science, requiring only human oversight in high-stakes situations.

The report also introduces the human-agent ratio, a measure that “balances human oversight with agent efficiency” in the hybrid teams of the future. It says that it would be necessary for organizations in the future to optimize the balance between human and digital labor.

But not all tasks are created equal, especially those roles that rely on intrinsically human qualities such as empathy and nuance.

Despite this shift, it is seen that human work will persist in the age of AI, simply because people expect others to be responsible for the consequences of their actions or decisions. “People prefer using AI not to replace the value humans provide, but to enhance it,” the report adds.

Reworked

As it is, these shifts are remolding how employees navigate the work environment, such as career trajectories. The report shows that most skills used today will change by 2030.

The impact is more pronounced for those who are just starting, or are still early, in their careers. According to the report, 83 percent of global business leaders think AI may enable individuals to tackle more complex work earlier in their careers.

There are challenges that lie ahead. For instance, 44 percent of surveyed Filipino business leaders see upskilling of their employees as their top priority, while about 80 percent plan to hire for AI-related roles in the immediate future.

However, what is clear is that the workplace is being reworked by AI. Those who were able to survive previous shifts, such as the change brought by the internet, did not only adopt the tools available to them, but rethought what it means to work.

“Imagine knowing what you know today just before the internet changed everything. That’s where we are with AI,” the report describes. “The question isn’t if AI will reshape work—it’s how fast we’re willing to move with it.”

Microsoft Philippines’ Maquera, meanwhile, banks on Filipinos’ ingenuity and adaptability to ride this crest of change.

“As the world of work evolves, equipping our workforce with AI fluency and digital skills is not just a competitive advantage—it’s essential to driving inclusive growth and innovation across the country,” he says. —Contributed