Ateneo hosts gen AI camp on bullying prevention

On 16 May 2025, the Public Mental Health Lab of Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Psychology, in partnership with Aretè, Ateneo Build, Communications Department, and the Ateneo Laboratory for Learning Sciences (ALLS), hosted a Gen AI Camp on Bullying Prevention.  The Camp began with a welcome message from Dr. Migo Mantaring, Director of the Bureau of Learner Support Services of DepEd, and Dr Didith Rodrigo of ALLS. Camille Cariaga from the Bureau of Learning Protection of the Department of Education provided Inputs on the prevalence and type of bullying in public schools.  Dr Gina Hechanova, professor of the Psychology Department and project leader, shared what bystanders and victims of bullying can do.  Aaron Vicencio of the Communications Department talked about visual storytelling, and Joben Ilagan talked about Gen AI and prompt architecture. 

The Camp brought together 19 college and graduate students from Psychology, Computer Science, Management, Information Design, and Communication Technology from Ateneo de Manila University and CIIT College of Arts and Technology. Using a human-centered design, Grade 7 public school students and their parents shared their experiences and suggestions on the type of message and modes of bullying prevention materials.  By the end of the day, multi-disciplinary teams pitched possible digital materials for bullying prevention for students and parents.   Selected projects will develop their projects for pilot-testing and possible turnover to the Department of Education. 

The participants found the Camp eye-opening in many ways.  As one student said, “I'm not a stranger to AI, but I found it very interesting that there are other dimensions like image generation features that I did not know about. I didn't expect that I would learn that.”

However, some students were still not sold on using AI, “Medyo gray area ako doon sa pag-generate ng AI art.  We need to prioritize humans.” On the other hand, there were those who understood the value of AI in idea generation, “We would not have been able to generate and pitch these ideas in this short time, if we did this manually. AI allowed us to give an idea of what the projects would be like.”