AI, by You: Anton Bonifacio’s Vision of AI for All

How do you become an expert in a field that’s constantly evolving? The answer, clear in the professional journey of Anton Bonifacio, is to constantly evolve yourself too. Anton has been Globe’s Chief Information Security Officer for the past ten years and is now its newly appointed Chief AI officer – here, he recalls his industry beginnings and shares the future he envisions for AI in Globe.

When I started at Globe, my responsibility was for IT security. Eight months in, I told them it wasn’t going to work.

Telco has multiple facets: you have IT, network, business, and more. I knew we had to expand the scope. That’s when we built the Information Security and Data Privacy (ISDP) group at Globe, pulling out all the different security functions across multiple groups and creating a separate division to focus on it. 

Telco has multiple facets: you have IT, network, business, and more. I knew we had to expand the scope. That's when we built the Information Security and Data Privacy (ISDP) group at Globe.

We recognized that we had to create something bigger without necessarily thinking about, “Am I going to get a promotion?” We thought more about, “What does the job require to succeed?”

Even before the organization operated as one Globe Group with Globe’s portfolio companies, we already expanded our scope to the group level. We knew then that aside from telco, we also had to look after adjacent businesses like GCash. Now, we operate as the central security function in the larger Globe group.

Looking back, this seemed like the tallest of orders. I just turned 31 when I joined Globe, being one of the youngest Vice Presidents in the company. Age always felt like a barrier in my previous experiences as a consultant. I was always wearing a beard to look older, and I never revealed my age.

I grew a lot at Globe, not just in years but in professional experience and my personal maturity.

I started my career early. I was a creative writing major at the University of the Philippines, but I was already doing some consulting on the side, largely around open source and Linux. I had a stint at Asia Pacific College, helping train some of their faculty. And while I have always been passionate about creative writing, I wondered if I could focus on computer science. 

Before earning my degree in Computer Science, I was a Creative Writing major.

Of course, that meant starting over. I was already in my third year at UP. Luckily the dean at Asia Pacific College offered that I finish the degree there in just two years. I’m thankful that my family supported the move despite being a UP family – I was nervous they wouldn’t accept that I would be the first person in our family to not graduate from UP. 

Focusing on computer science allowed me to continue my work, even doing consulting for the government while I was still in college. When I graduated, I scaled that up. I was one of the first Certified Information Systems Security Professionals and Red Hat Certified Engineers in the Philippines. 

Data Privacy Month 2024 at The Globe Tower

In my first few months at Globe, I thought I had to do the same thing – appear to look older. But my age never came up. This is a testament to how forward-thinking and open-minded Globe is; I felt I could just be myself. I think people only found out a few years later when I turned 40. 

I grew a lot at Globe, not just in years but in professional experience and my personal maturity. I used to be very focused on outcomes in terms of the job function, but over the years I started to think about my team more, about caring for people and looking at the big picture. That part of the Globe culture – the value of Putting Customers First and taking care of people – got ingrained in me. I believe I certainly evolved as a leader, and it made me a better person outside the office. A lot of that translated at home and in my personal life; I became more grounded in general.

When our mission is clear, it’s easy to move fast.

This mindset shift was crucial as we continued to grow ISDP. We focused on the big picture. We weren’t afraid to spread our wings and expand. 

At the heart of everything we do is our mission: to protect Globe and our customers. So we looked at ways we can achieve that. We brought our functions closer to the subscriber, so we’re not just protecting the data centers but each and every customer. A lot of the innovations we’ve done, like anti-spam and fraud protection, are largely because of that pursuit of our mission. And to this day we still enjoy being the first and only telco in the world to have some of these controls.

Onstage at Globe Business' Enterprise Innovation Forum in 2022 with keynote guest Swan Sit, Carlo Malana, and Nilo Zantua.

When our mission is clear, it’s easy to move fast. If we need to do it, we commit to it. When we built the AI group, we didn’t say, “Okay, I need 15 people to get the group started. Then I’m going to spend the next six months trying to hire people.” We just made it a matrix organization. All my direct reports are from different groups. The head of AI architecture, for example, is from Product Engineering and Digital Growth (PEDG). The head of AI engineering is from the Information Systems Group (ISG).  The heads of AI delivery and governance are both from ISDP. A lot of our SMEs are representatives from other teams.

Globe's AI Group

The fact that we’re cross-functional aligns with our entire AI strategy of democratizing AI in Globe and giving everyone access and the ability to experiment. I think we’re fairly unique in that – a lot of companies now, as they try to adopt AI, misunderstand it.

They try to buy AI rather than adopt it. They shop for Generative AI products because they’re in a rush to prove they have AI. But in Globe’s AI group, we want to empower people to learn how to use AI. Our goal is that 80% of the AI co-pilots or bots used by team members in Globe are self-developed by our people. We should be able to build it ourselves.

"Our goal is that 80% of the AI co-pilots or bots used by team members in Globe are self-developed by our people. We should be able to build it ourselves."

The analogy I always use is that AI is not any different from an Excel sheet. Imagine if, after Microsoft Excel was released, you ask another company to make your spreadsheets and you pay them for every sheet they make. You can take advantage of the technology quickly, but it’s not sustainable – and I think it’s ridiculous.

What we want is to teach people to use Microsoft Excel so they can make their own spreadsheets. We apply the same idea to AI, especially Generative AI. Every Ka-Globe, at some point, can create their own AI co-pilots and solve their pain points.

I always advise my people to stay curious; to question everything and not take them at face value.

It helps that a growth mindset is part of Globe culture, as it keeps us teachable, even with emerging technologies like Generative AIs. I always advise my people to stay curious; to question everything and not take them at face value. And it’s very relevant in the age of social media. It’s easy to parrot things. But if you don’t ask, you don’t wonder, you’re not really going to try to know more.

A large part of what drives curiosity, at least based on my experience, is staying obsessed. Being obsessive is what led me to where I am today. I believe you don’t have to know everything, but you do have to obsess over that pursuit of knowledge. This is what allows you to grow.

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