In February 2017, the Department of Science and Technology led the discussion for the AI R&D program in Philippines which was conducted by the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD). The aim was to identify potential market and areas of possible collaborations between public and private institutions. An additional 40M budget was allocated to jumpstart the AI program for the same year. There were five priority application areas identified for the AI program: health, education, transportation and infrastructure, environment and agriculture, and Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO).