DOST launches center dedicated to artificial intelligence

The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) launched on Thursday, 26 February, the National Artificial Intelligence Center for Research and Innovation (NAICRI), consolidating years of AI research, computing infrastructure, and capacity-building into a permanent national institution designed to outlast individual projects and funding cycles.

Launched at The Manila Hotel, NAICRI will serve as the country's central hub for AI research, advanced computing, and innovation, and as the institutional backbone for the National AI Strategy for the Philippines.

For more than a decade, Filipino scientists and engineers have been building AI capabilities—from supercomputing and weather forecasting systems to pandemic response platforms and agricultural research tools. These efforts, while technically sound, often remained isolated, dependent on individual projects, temporary funding, or specific teams.

NAICRI consolidates these capabilities under a coherent institutional framework, ensuring that working systems become permanent national assets that are governed, scalable, and accessible beyond Metro Manila.

"For years, Filipino scientists, engineers, and innovators have been building the foundations of our AI future, often without fanfare," DOST Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. said in his welcome remarks.

"Today, we give that work a permanent national anchor. This signals a deliberate shift: from fragmented and project-based AI efforts to an institutionalized, coordinated, and scalable national capability," Solidum added.

Filipino scientists have already created an AI-powered weather forecasting system.

"The goal of the project is to create AI for weather forecasting. Using AI compared to the traditional method of weather forecasting, our forecasting will be faster. The traditional method of forecasting is every 3 hours," said Ken Truita, project staff in charge of weather forecasting from DOST's Advanced Science and Technology Institute, in an interview with Daily Tribune.

"In real-time, weather forecasting will take a long time, sometimes every five days or two days," Truita said. Using AI, the project's goal is to create forecasts every 15 minutes.

"For example, if you want to see the forecast of rain in Quezon City and Las Piñas, you can see it much better because the spatial resolution is 2km by 2km. Instead of two days or five days forecast, you can see the weather forecast in the future in 14 days," he said.

Asked about the accuracy rate of the forecasting, Truita said, "For verification purposes, they are verifying the validity of their forecast. For now, it's internal but based on findings. As of now, since it's still in validation and it's being tested internally."

"It's faster and more accurate. For verification purposes, I'm not sure about the performance. The data assimilation with Philippine data is ongoing to get the atmospheric conditions or weather patterns of the Philippines," he added.

Meanwhile, the DOST has developed ROAMER (Robot for Optimized and Autonomous Mission-Enhancement Response), an autonomous mobile robot designed to enhance farm operations in banana plantations.

"It monitors plantation and crop conditions, detects diseases timely, and supports farmers through data-driven insights," Carlo Jonas Cariño, the technical lead for the project, said.

Cariño, however, emphasized that ROAMER is just a tool and will not replace farmers.

"The farmer doesn't have to go through all the places. ROAMER will just have to go to the far places. The idea is, you can check the disease there. So, this is a robot. We'll just let it run," he added.

DOST has also developed iTANONG, an AI system that allows users to access information stored in databases and generate insights from it.

"It's somehow similar kay ChatGPT pero we're not branding it as a Filipino ChatGPT kasi ang problema kay ChatGPT pag nag-upload ka ng mga sensitive information ng organization, let’s say yung budget nyo, within the organization, bawal syang lumabas," said Engr. Aunhel John Adoptante, Science Research Specialist 1 and the technical lead for the project.

"Pero with iTANONG your data or databases pwede nyo sya i-connect dyan pero the data stays with you. Even us developers hindi po namin makikita yung data ninyo and you can ask the platform questions about your data. The best part is that you can ask in English, in Tagalog or in Taglish. And we're also working on other languages or dialects as well," he added.

The Department of Education (DepEd) said the establishment of NAICRI complements ongoing reforms in workforce development, digital infrastructure, and responsible governance.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara said DepEd wants Filipino students to be ready for a future where AI is common, while ensuring it is used safely, fairly, and responsibly.

“Education must be both protected and future-ready,” Secretary Angara noted. “We will harness AI to close learning gaps, strengthen governance, and empower teachers—but always with safeguards, transparency, and human oversight.”

Even before the launch of NAICRI, DepEd has been institutionalizing AI integration across three key pillars: AI in Education, Education on AI, and AI for Education Systems, anchored on learner protection and human-centered innovation.

To ensure guardrails are firmly in place, DepEd issued the Foundational Guidelines on the Integration of Artificial Intelligence in Basic Education, establishing a national framework that promotes ethical, inclusive, and risk-proportionate AI use in schools.

The policy adopts a risk-based classification system aligned with global standards, explicitly prohibiting high-risk uses such as social scoring, manipulative chatbots for minors, and biometric emotion recognition. It mandates Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs), the establishment of a DepEd AI Registry, and strict compliance with data privacy and child protection laws prior to any AI deployment.

As NAICRI takes its place as the Philippines’ institutional AI hub, DepEd reaffirmed that basic education will help shape an AI-ready generation of critical thinkers, ethical users, and future innovators.