Why Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa says AI is but a marketing term

Ressa began with what she called “the bad stuff upfront”. Generative AI may impress with its speed and fluency. Still, its costs are profound: surveillance and digital colonialism, the exploitation of low-paid data workers and severe environmental damage from energy-hungry models.

“Colonialism didn’t die—it just moved online,” Ressa said, citing Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie. “If we don’t put laws in place, we will be atomised. We will be manipulated.”

The risks are not hypothetical. Agentic AIs—systems that act autonomously—were rolled out this year despite experts’ warnings. “We didn’t know how they’re going to perform. We had no idea,” Ressa stressed. “Already, there are cases of AI pushing people into psychosis, even suicide.” More and more people are reportedly turning to AI chatbots for emotional support, with a 16-year-old teenager in California taking his own life after confiding in ChatGPT about his feelings.

Perhaps most corrosive of all is AI’s indifference to truth. Error rates in systems like ChatGPT can range from 16 per cent to 79 per cent. “That’s why [you must] be careful with your kids,” Ressa warned. “They shouldn’t learn to write on this stuff. It makes things up. These companies don’t value facts.”

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For Ressa, the conversation about AI is bigger than headlines about job loss. “It’s not about, ‘Will AI take away my job?’ It’s about the system,” she said. “AI will take over a lot of jobs. The question is how companies and governments respond.” History offers context: secretarial pools were eliminated almost overnight by the personal computer. “The same thing is happening with AI,” she said. “It changes the entire system.”

She broke this shift into five levers: representation (who sees what), decision-making (who decides), execution (who acts), workflows (how parts connect) and governance (who writes the rules). Each lever shapes corporate performance—and the health of democracy.

“AI isn’t just about automation,” Ressa explained. “It’s about coordination—taking fragmented actors and creating shared outcomes. That’s what makes the system perform better.”

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Lawyers, for example, once learnt by working through cases; now AI can do it faster, shifting competition from hours billed to outcomes achieved. In Amazon’s warehouses, robots coordinate work while human labour takes a backseat. “AI unbundles tasks and changes how the whole system works,” Ressa said.

Using basketball as a metaphor, she said now that data has transformed strategy, every player shoots three-pointers and every player covers the floor. “That’s what AI does to organisations,” she said. But with power comes responsibility. If companies optimise only for profit, society pays the price. Her call was for governance that embeds truth and trust into the digital bloodstream. “When you don’t have facts, you can’t have truth. And without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality. That’s the core of our democratic crisis.”

For media and journalism, the stakes are profound. “It’s like you got a robber outside, and you pay them to rob your house—that’s what these tech companies are doing,” Ressa said, referring to news organisations forced to pay for server space while their work is scraped for AI training.

“We are Pavlov’s dogs. Our biology has been hacked,” she said. Lies spread faster than facts—six times faster in 2018, and worse today—mainly when fuelled by fear, anger or hate. Social media rewards shock over truth, making the fight for accurate information a battle for democracy itself.

Ressa highlighted the importance of ethical governance, both from governments and from individuals. She framed AI as a mirror, reflecting the information and intentions it is fed. Its impact, she suggested, is not inherently moral; it amplifies the values of those who use it. This underscores the crucial role each of us plays in shaping the future of AI.

When guided by good intentions, AI can serve society positively—but when misused, it can become a tool for harm. The solution lies in collective action. “We need a public interest tech stack. We need to collaborate, collaborate, collaborate.” Journalism must stop competing for scraps of attention and instead build infrastructure that sustains facts. Ressa pointed to Rappler’s Matrix chat app as proof: civil, engaged communities thrive when systems are designed to serve them, not corporate profit.

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“The damage has been done,” Ressa admitted. “But if we accept that, maybe we can do something better with it.”

By embedding truth, fostering collaboration and setting ethical guardrails, she said AI can enhance decision-making, strengthen communities and safeguard democracy. Ressa emphasised that technology is not neutral; its impact reflects the values we build into it.

Ressa’s message was clear-eyed, sometimes bleak, but never fatalistic. “Crisis is opportunity. The Philippines has already lived through hell and purgatory. We know what’s at stake. And if we get this right, AI doesn’t just replace tasks—it can help us build trust, shared understanding and a stronger future.”

AI has already changed the world. The question now is whether we let it destroy the idea of truth—or help us rebuild a healthier, more informed democracy.

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