May God lengthen the life of my university professor \u2014 Professor Gbarfsky \u2014 who used to wish out loud that he would live long enough to see this era: the era of real artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
He would say it often: “I hope we live long enough to see the day of true AI.”<\/em><\/p>\n In those years, cloud storage hadn’t matured into what we know today, and AI required computational and storage resources that simply did not exist. It was hard for most people to imagine the kind of progress we now see. And yet, there were scientific theories that predicted AI would one day approach the human level in certain capacities. That is exactly what we are watching unfold today \u2014 at accelerating speed.<\/p>\n Now, after this enormous leap, I believe the next few years will bring near-total reliance on AI across every field of life.<\/p>\n From drug development, to what arrives on our breakfast and lunch tables, to food production, to university education, to scientific research, all the way to the smallest details of daily life.<\/p>\n And the difference between someone who uses AI and someone who doesn’t will not be subtle. It will be a difference of “light years” in productivity, scientific output, and economic strength.<\/p>\n I have long compared AI to gunpowder when it first appeared in history.<\/p>\n The mistake of being late to it could resemble the mistake of the Mamluks, who were late to adopt gunpowder and firearms. The result was their defeat by the Ottomans and the loss of their state.<\/p>\n In my view, lagging behind into the AI age could lead to similar outcomes \u2014 at the level of entire states and entire peoples.<\/p>\n I expect that America’s monopoly over the major advances in AI will lead in the future to a form of global control that we have not seen before.<\/p>\n Control over AI means control over drug development, over food, over education, over the economy, over production, over scientific research \u2014 over almost anything you can imagine.<\/p>\n China remains a serious competitor that should not be underestimated. But I see the United States as still being several stages ahead in this field \u2014 especially if the American claims hold up, that some Chinese models depend on imitating or copying American innovations and technologies.<\/p>\n If those claims are true, history may repeat itself in a different form. It would resemble what happened during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union pursued American nuclear technology through espionage and stolen blueprints.<\/p>\n American dominance over AI may give the United States enormous superiority over the rest of the world \u2014 not just militarily or economically, but scientifically, educationally, and technologically. That could open a vast civilizational gap between the United States and the rest of the world over the coming decades.<\/p>\n \u2014 Omar Abuassaf<\/strong> My old professor used to say: “I hope we live long enough to see real AI.” We are living through that day now. The question is what happens after.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reflections","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omarabuassaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The gunpowder analogy<\/h3>\n
From invention to dominance<\/h3>\n
The widening gap<\/h3>\n
\nComputer engineer and AI specialist
\nLos Angeles, May 7, 2026<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"