AI will help humans operate at a "higher intellectual level", even if that means ditching some of the life skills we once had, a leading Arab scientist has said.
Fadel Adib, an MIT professor and successful AI start-up founder, said it was not necessarily bad that people are coming to rely on large language models such as ChatGPT.
"We first augment humans and increase their productivity, and then eventually we also augment humans with robots, not just with AI ... increase productivity there as well. AI is changing who we are as humans," he told The National at a World Economic Forum event in Dubai.
His company, Cartesian, uses AI technology to help robots navigate hundreds of warehouses and retail stores in 15 countries, tracking and collecting thousands of different products.
"Some of us cannot operate without asking ChatGPT the question, and that might not necessarily be bad," he said at the Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders, which he co-chaired.
"I'm a professor. So I remember when people used to say 'oh, students are not memorising anymore in schools, and we're losing the ability to memorise.'
"What's the point of memorising if you can Google everything? And maybe AI is going to help us operate at a higher intellectual level.
"And as humans, we've repeatedly managed to do that. We don't learn how to make fire anymore, and we don't need to.
"As humans, we've managed to repeatedly figure out how we operate at a higher level of abstraction, and I think we're going to do that again."
Dr Adib, who grew up in Tripoli, Lebanon and was given a Dh1 million Great Arab Minds award in 2023 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, also predicted further challenges to US tech firms' dominance of AI.
Speaking earlier at the same event in Dubai, Omar Sultan Al Olama, the UAE's AI minister, said that superpower dominance of AI was not appealing, and that middle powers and sovereign governments would want an alternative.
"AI is moving at an accelerated pace. It is moving from the digital into the physical world," said Dr Adib.
"If you look at the 1990s, where the internet was growing... that was a US-led world.
"Today, there is the race between the US and China on AI. What role is Europe and Africa and Latin America and the rest of Asia going to play? The answer is not clear that just the US or China is gonna win this race."
He added: "Our first prime adopters were in Europe. And if you look at the United Arab Emirates, there's a lot of investment. There's a lot of AI investments here in Dubai, and they are deploying it. They're seeing real change. And in Abu Dhabi, with the creation of G42, and the investment in data infrastructure.
"And as a scientist, I love challenges, and as a technologist, I love the optimism of it. There is an opportunity for real change and impact."