Abstract
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping public governance, promising greater efficiency while raising urgent questions about fairness, accountability, and human oversight. Within the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd), AI tools increasingly support policy implementation, yet little is known about how public managers personally experience and navigate the ethical dilemmas this technology introduces. This study addresses that gap by exploring how third-level public managers in DepEd Region III perceive, interpret, and enact ethical considerations when engaging with AI in governance and policy implementation. Employing Moustakas' heuristic phenomenological approach, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with eight third-level career executive officer participants, analyzing their narratives through the six stages of heuristic inquiry—Initial Engagement, Immersion, Incubation, Illumination, Explication, and Creative Synthesis—and interpreting findings through New Public Service, Ethical Governance, Algorithmic Accountability, and Policy Implementation theories. Results reveal that participants experienced AI not as a neutral administrative tool but as an emerging moral presence requiring constant validation, contextualization, and human judgment. Recurring concerns included data privacy, misinformation, depersonalized communication, and the erosion of authentic human intent, alongside a marked absence of institutional AI governance frameworks. Participants consistently affirmed that final ethical accountability must remain with human leaders. The study concludes that AI governance in education is fundamentally a human and moral undertaking, and recommends that DepEd institutionalize clear ethics frameworks, strengthen AI literacy, and mandate human oversight to ensure technology serves rather than displaces ethical leadership.
