MANILA – In a literary showdown that bridged traditional metaphors with modern anxieties, two 16-year-old high schoolers from Sorsogon swept the youth essay categories at the 73rd Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, using everyday Filipino rituals to dissect artificial intelligence’s creeping influence on human creativity and emotional depth. Held on November 25, 2025, at the Manila Polo Club, the awards – now in their 75th year since 1951 – honored 58 winners from over 2,000 entries, spotlighting emerging voices grappling with AI’s role in writing, learning, and even mental health amid whispers of “nepo babies” in broader cultural debates.
The evening’s youth standouts, Joshua Manio and John Carl Guardian, both Grade 11 STEM students at Gubat National High School, turned personal vignettes into poignant critiques, earning first prizes in the Kabataan Sanaysay (Filipino) and Kabataan Essay (English) categories, respectively. Their works, rich with local flavor, emerged from a pool where AI’s incursion was a dominant thread, as judges noted the technology’s evolution from a writing aid to a “deeply personal” companion – even an “alternative therapist” for the young.
Manio’s “Tamang Pagluto ng Sinigang (The Right Way to Cooking Sinigang)” draws from his kitchen rituals with his mother, contrasting the tangy authenticity of fresh tamarind in the beloved sour soup against the convenience of artificial powder mixes. The metaphor slices sharp: Just as the pre-packaged shortcut dilutes the dish’s soul, AI – tools like ChatGPT – risks watering down human emotions and originality. “There are times when, as human beings, we direct our emotions, our feelings, and our thoughts toward AI. It’s like we’re just heating up sinigang mix. But, because it’s artificial, it only makes us more diluted,” Manio reflected in his essay. He extends the critique to mental health, observing how peers lean on AI for solace, yet stresses empathy: “I also wrote [my essay] to remind readers that just because someone uses AI, it doesn’t mean they have some kind of mental issue. It’s just that, in their lives, that’s the only thing they can turn to.”
Guardian’s “The Salt Sermon,” set against the salty whispers of Dancalan Beach in Gubat, unfolds through the eyes of Mang Lino, a weathered mussel vendor spinning yarns of the sea’s receding tides as omens of loss. Here, AI emerges as the modern tide pulling dreamers adrift, eroding the shores of creativity. “If the new technological tool pulls someone too far, ‘someone or something within you, which is creativity, is also leaving,’” Guardian writes, evoking a quiet elegy for the irreplaceable spark of human ingenuity amid digital deluges.
Judges hailed the duo’s fresh lenses on timeless tensions. Volt Contreras, a seasoned literary voice, marveled at AI’s intimate grip: “AI has become a deeply personal tool, even for mental health conversations.” Film scholar Ed Cabagnot praised the youths for “continuing to talk about important issues, challenging us to process it again, and to look at old issues with new eyes with their creativity.” Criseld “Dang” Cecilio-Palanca, vice president of the Carlos Palanca Foundation, saw a generational handoff: “The entries show the passing of the digital torch through generations” in an AI era, urging writers to ground innovation in “fresh imagination to forge literature that keeps in step with the times.” She nodded to “nepo babies” as a cultural flashpoint in submissions, though the top essays zeroed in on technology’s human toll.
Established by the late businessman Don Carlos Palanca Sr. to nurture Philippine letters, culture, and education, the awards continue to unearth voices like Manio and Guardian’s – raw, reflective, and resolutely Filipino. As AI reshapes the page and the mind, their words serve as a timely reminder: In the recipe for progress, some ingredients – heart, heritage, humanity – can’t be synthesized. With full results now live on the Palanca Foundation site, the 73rd edition proves once more: The future of Filipino literature isn’t written by machines – it’s stirred by the young hands holding the pen.