As artificial intelligence spreads across industries, much of the global conversation remains fixed on extremes, fear of job losses on one side and blind optimism on the other. For Professor Abbas El Gamal, however, the reality feels less dramatic and more structural. AI, in his view, is neither a cure-all nor a catastrophe, but a force already reshaping how work, skills, and careers are organised.

Those reflections came during a conversation on the sidelines of the Great Arab Minds awards in Dubai, where El Gamal was honoured in the Engineering and Technology category by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the Museum of the Future. He was recognised alongside five other Arab thinkers across the fields of science, medicine, economics, architecture, and the arts.

Great Arab Minds aims to celebrate Arab achievement while encouraging long-term thinking around knowledge and innovation. From El Gamal’s perspective, the Arab world is not approaching AI from the margins. The pace of technology adoption across the region, he noted, is already striking.

“The level of adoption of technology in the Arab world is stunning,” he said. “Everybody uses technology.”

A CAPABILITY THAT CUTS ACROSS EVERYTHING

What distinguishes AI from earlier technological shifts, El Gamal observed, is its reach. Rather than disrupting a single sector, it is embedding itself across the economy. “What I see immediately is the application on every segment of industry, commerce, finance, and education,” he said.

That breadth brings both opportunity and disruption. Job displacement linked to automation is not theoretical. “Replacing jobs will definitely happen, and it has been happening already,” he said. Still, El Gamal resisted framing AI as a wholesale replacement for people.

Instead, he described a period of adjustment marked by dislocation, retraining, and eventual rebalancing. “Yes, there will be a lot of displacements,” he said. “But maybe things will settle down, and maybe the net impact will be positive for human beings.”

Not all work, El Gamal noted, is equally exposed. Practical, hands-on roles remain far harder to automate than many cognitive or administrative positions.

“There are jobs that are not going to be replaceable, which are technical or handy,” he said. At the same time, the infrastructure powering AI is generating new forms of employment, often overlooked in popular narratives.

“There will be more jobs created to support, for example, data centers,” he said. “There are a lot of jobs in data centers, and a lot of jobs that support AI in general.” The shift, in other words, is not simply about loss, but redistribution.

WHY CHASING TRENDS MIGHT BACKFIRE

When asked for advice to young engineers today, El Gamal returned to a theme that runs counter to the current rush toward so-called hot skills.

“Follow your passion, whatever that is,” he said, warning against chasing trends simply because they are popular. “If you’re just doing it because you’re imitating everybody,  then maybe you’ll be fine,” he said. “But maybe you will not be fine also.”

What lasts longer, in his view, is depth, committing fully to what one does best.

“When you get into something, give it everything,” he said. “Don’t get into things halfway.” Flexibility matters just as much. Fields evolve faster than academic timelines, and specialisations can disappear before students graduate. “The XYZ could be gone by the time you graduate,” he said.

“Being flexible is very important,” he said. “Always keeping some big picture in mind.”