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# ‘What’s Next?’: my panel from The Shift 2026
- URL: https://www.at-media-group.com/what-i-did-next/whats-next-my-ai-panel-from-the-shift-2026/
- Published: 2026-06-30T08:00:18.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T06:07:38.000Z
- Author: Malak Fouad
- Tags: What I Did Next, Events, The Shift, Finance, Artificial Intelligence

I recently moderated a panel about how AI is affecting Egypt and the region across fintech, media, telecom, and venture capital. My panelists was made up of a number of the show's alumni including [Ahmed Alfi](https://www.at-media-group.com/what-i-did-next/encore-ahmed-alfi/) (Chairman, Sawari Ventures), [Amy Mowafi](https://www.at-media-group.com/what-i-did-next/encore-with-media-powerhouse-amy-mowafi/) (Co-founder & CEO, MO4 Network), [Mounir Nakhla](https://www.at-media-group.com/what-i-did-next/mounir-nakhla/) (Founder & CEO, MNT Halan) and [Karima El-Hakim](https://www.at-media-group.com/what-i-did-next/karima-el-hakim/) (Partner for Africa, Plug and Play Tech Center), and Head of Cloud Software and Services for Ericsson North Middle East, Amer Sakkijha.

This panel was part of our partnership with *The Shift from e&*, powered by The Narrative Summit. The event was a prelude to the annual Narrative Summit's gathering in Soma Bay in October. 

```vtt
WEBVTT

00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:03.740
Hi, I'm Malak Fouad, and welcome again to What I Did Next. A couple of weeks

00:00:03.740 --> 00:00:07.210
ago, we partnered with the amazing team behind the Summit 2026.

00:00:07.210 --> 00:00:11.760
Powered by the Narrative Summit and e&, this event was a prelude to the larger

00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:15.110
gathering that the Narrative Summit will be hosting in October in Soma Bay.

00:00:15.110 --> 00:00:18.570
This event was important because it brought together all the most important

00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:24.080
companies in Egypt and beyond under one roof to look at how AI is impacting

00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:29.090
and will continue to impact the country and the region. How is it being viewed? How is it being used?

00:00:29.260 --> 00:00:33.260
Who's scared and who's excited about this new tech? As part of my involvement

00:00:33.260 --> 00:00:36.940
at the summit, I moderated one of the panels, and that brought together some

00:00:36.940 --> 00:00:41.600
of the alumni from the show, some of the most interesting people we've had on what I did next so far.

00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:46.070
Our discussion was extremely vibrant and seemed to raise as many questions as it answered.

00:00:46.380 --> 00:00:49.650
Now, I know that AI means different things to different people.

00:00:49.820 --> 00:00:53.240
For some, it's like the next frontier in human evolution.

00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:57.910
For others, it's the end of the species as we know it. I am...

00:00:58.860 --> 00:01:02.560
And Ahmed will know this, I kind of fall in the second bracket.

00:01:03.090 --> 00:01:08.920
I'm a skeptic. And I don't think many people in this room are skeptics.

00:01:10.260 --> 00:01:14.340
But I'm willing to hear and have my opinions changed.

00:01:16.260 --> 00:01:21.480
We know, of course, the main leader in the field right now is Anthropic.

00:01:22.010 --> 00:01:27.770
And Dario Amodai has a bit of a schizophrenic relationship with AI.

00:01:28.210 --> 00:01:32.110
On the one hand, he thinks it's the most amazing thing and it's going to do

00:01:32.110 --> 00:01:33.850
incredible things for humanity.

00:01:34.180 --> 00:01:36.960
And on the other hand, he says it's going to end humanity.

00:01:37.330 --> 00:01:42.280
So when someone like him is uncertain, I think for the rest of us,

00:01:42.280 --> 00:01:46.780
it's also very complicated and difficult to grasp.

00:01:48.370 --> 00:01:52.050
I think the key is we just don't know what's going to come and we don't know

00:01:52.050 --> 00:01:53.430
how things are going to evolve.

00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:58.370
We can speculate, but I think it's difficult to tell.

00:02:00.150 --> 00:02:04.870
I know the panel today are going to shed light on the big question,

00:02:04.870 --> 00:02:08.170
but from different perspectives. We have a lot of different industries present.

00:02:08.790 --> 00:02:14.950
Of course, Ahmed is an investor on a mega scale in Egypt and the Middle East.

00:02:15.370 --> 00:02:19.890
We have the media represented by Amy wearing different hats in the media.

00:02:20.050 --> 00:02:22.220
So that's going to be interesting to hear from Amy.

00:02:22.710 --> 00:02:30.310
Of course, Mounir with his unicorn, a very local business that has now gone global.

00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:33.780
We need a little thing on your head.

00:02:35.700 --> 00:02:38.890
So, Amer, of course, representative of the telecom industry,

00:02:39.760 --> 00:02:45.950
very glad to have his perspective, and Karima, our VC leading light,

00:02:47.220 --> 00:02:52.390
with a very interesting two-week trip from the U.S.

00:02:52.390 --> 00:02:55.870
With some mega insights. I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about that today.

00:02:57.100 --> 00:03:00.710
I'm going to direct one question per panelist as a starting point.

00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:04.790
And then if we have some time afterwards, we're going to do a bit more of a general discussion.

00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:09.740
I'm going to begin with Ahmed. So I know, Ahmed, that you like the look of health

00:03:09.740 --> 00:03:15.550
care, robotics, AI diagnostics, and personalized education.

00:03:16.740 --> 00:03:20.640
It's already proven to be a game changer, AI, in all of these areas.

00:03:21.230 --> 00:03:25.490
As an investor, what are the criteria you look for when you're investing?

00:03:30.360 --> 00:03:36.930
Interesting. The most important thing I would say is the exact opposite of what

00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:38.070
my panel said this morning.

00:03:38.500 --> 00:03:40.270
Sherif, stability.

00:03:41.150 --> 00:03:45.680
Okay. Sherif's looking for stability and that is the right thing to look for for infrastructure.

00:03:46.660 --> 00:03:51.230
For us, we're looking for volatility. We're looking for alpha because if the

00:03:51.230 --> 00:03:55.910
result is certain, there's not really much to invest in as a VC, right?

00:03:55.910 --> 00:04:01.310
Everybody's going to the same place so you're looking for breadth and uncertainty

00:04:01.310 --> 00:04:04.180
as much as possible and you're looking for a team,

00:04:06.350 --> 00:04:11.660
this is the tricky part and i don't want to mean it as a criticism but the biggest problem with,

00:04:12.540 --> 00:04:16.090
engineering heavy teams which is kind of the things i really like because i

00:04:16.090 --> 00:04:22.800
like the geeky stuff is they fall in love with their tech and the model not

00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:24.660
fall in love with the product and the customer,

00:04:25.780 --> 00:04:34.540
okay so that's the second part is having a team that is focused on the product and the customer um.

00:04:37.550 --> 00:04:43.890
And that we've done the analysis. It's when I was younger, I used to think of,

00:04:43.890 --> 00:04:46.290
you know, one plus me is three and I'm going to make the difference.

00:04:46.780 --> 00:04:52.770
And come to learn that the marginal difference that we can add is minimal.

00:04:53.060 --> 00:04:55.940
It has to be the team has to be in what they do.

00:04:56.450 --> 00:05:00.490
Right. And on occasion, we can amp that up.

00:05:02.960 --> 00:05:09.070
Probably the the last thing is do they have a clear goal of where they're going,

00:05:10.610 --> 00:05:13.950
and if they do and the problem they're trying to solve that's great,

00:05:15.820 --> 00:05:20.360
the ones where you invest in a technology which i am currently in the process

00:05:20.360 --> 00:05:23.310
of having done and you're trying to take it to the market,

00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:30.210
you need to transition from tech to product right very difficult and lastly

00:05:30.210 --> 00:05:32.940
i fall in love with like really deep tech geeky things,

00:05:33.960 --> 00:05:40.710
and the cycle of development can be longer than my fund life which makes for

00:05:41.070 --> 00:05:46.250
a difficult investment decision because some of these semiconductors take years to develop so.

00:05:46.730 --> 00:05:51.270
That's exactly what i was going to move on to actually and ask you whether because

00:05:51.270 --> 00:05:59.010
i because ai is moving so fast and um the the investments that you make,

00:05:59.010 --> 00:06:01.610
are they much more short-term in outlook?

00:06:02.140 --> 00:06:05.350
Because I'm assuming you're not going to be looking at a 10-year window.

00:06:05.350 --> 00:06:08.710
You're looking at a two to three years, and then you're out,

00:06:08.710 --> 00:06:10.570
or then you're rethinking the investment.

00:06:13.540 --> 00:06:16.330
AI is a tool. There's still going to be projects that are going to take 5,

00:06:16.330 --> 00:06:18.730
10 years, no matter how much AI happens.

00:06:19.220 --> 00:06:23.080
I mentioned earlier today the idea of distributed AIs and how people are creating

00:06:23.080 --> 00:06:27.390
kind of, you know, rogue alternate networks to create AIs.

00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:34.280
So I'm not 100% sold on this super cycle.

00:06:34.560 --> 00:06:38.290
I will tell you one of the best things an AI can do is very similar to what

00:06:38.290 --> 00:06:41.200
I do to help people. I tell them what not to do.

00:06:42.290 --> 00:06:46.390
Okay? And most people rarely ask AI, what should I not do?

00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:50.160
You ask AI, what should I do? And AI is the best complementer.

00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:51.930
Its job is to make you feel good about yourself.

00:06:52.690 --> 00:06:59.480
Okay? I mean, anybody that's interactive with AI, you leave at the end thinking you're a genius, right?

00:06:59.690 --> 00:07:05.000
I'm smarter than the AI. It told me how smart I am and how right and how I corrected the AI, right?

00:07:05.570 --> 00:07:09.080
Talk to the AI the other way, okay? What can go wrong here?

00:07:09.650 --> 00:07:13.910
What is the mistake? How did this company die five years from now?

00:07:14.270 --> 00:07:17.830
How did this project blow up? What did I mess up in the process?

00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.770
Probably the best use of AI that nobody's taking advantage of.

00:07:21.170 --> 00:07:23.640
Yeah. So you're doing the counterintuitive thing.

00:07:23.890 --> 00:07:24.310
It's kind of,

00:07:27.690 --> 00:07:29.900
like, you know, when something dies, you do a postmortem wrap-up.

00:07:30.280 --> 00:07:33.870
This is a pre-mortem, right? Before it dies, right?

00:07:34.740 --> 00:07:38.230
But seriously, it's really a good thing to do. Do the analysis of what's going

00:07:38.230 --> 00:07:40.210
to kill this, what's going to make it go wrong.

00:07:40.210 --> 00:07:45.190
Yeah. Thanks, Ahmed. Mounir, I want to jump to you next, please.

00:07:45.870 --> 00:07:47.620
Your business is a fintech.

00:07:50.010 --> 00:07:53.840
How have you been incorporating AI, specifically in the Egyptian market,

00:07:54.200 --> 00:07:57.580
and how do you see the next few years moving for you?

00:07:59.390 --> 00:08:04.660
I'll start by saying I'm not at all skeptical about AI. It's real.

00:08:06.400 --> 00:08:08.780
I have the luxury to be skeptical. You don't.

00:08:09.640 --> 00:08:15.180
First-hand experiencing it, it's very, very powerful and it's very, very disruptive.

00:08:15.860 --> 00:08:23.480
And it's impacting organization structures and it's impacting how people are doing things.

00:08:23.830 --> 00:08:26.870
And it's impacting dynamic within teams.

00:08:27.820 --> 00:08:30.410
And I always thought, about dependency.

00:08:32.860 --> 00:08:38.850
Ages ago, I kept on telling my driver, you have to use Google Maps.

00:08:39.370 --> 00:08:45.250
No way. I know so much more than Google Maps. Google Maps, eh.

00:08:45.520 --> 00:08:47.550
And I know every street in Egypt.

00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:55.890
Now, every time I ride a car, through trial and error, he realized that he needs to rely on Google Maps.

00:08:57.060 --> 00:09:03.340
Take this to the power of 10. In our company today, we had very,

00:09:03.340 --> 00:09:09.030
very senior management that were responsible of very complex decisions.

00:09:09.460 --> 00:09:11.680
Decisions like risk management.

00:09:12.120 --> 00:09:18.050
Who do you grant? How much limit do you grant him? Pricing, elasticity of pricing.

00:09:18.050 --> 00:09:24.590
If we increase pricing or decrease pricing by 10%, will we overcompensate with customers or not?

00:09:25.140 --> 00:09:31.530
Who do you give the next best offer? And we had computer models that were using

00:09:31.530 --> 00:09:36.820
machine learning before large language models, and they would cluster customers.

00:09:36.820 --> 00:09:41.290
And then there was a human that would come in and would make a decision.

00:09:43.030 --> 00:09:48.290
And then we started applying large language models to our machine learning models.

00:09:48.750 --> 00:09:55.870
So suddenly, you've got insights that are coming from the data that you never thought existed.

00:09:56.230 --> 00:10:01.040
For example, in our line of business with risk models, if someone defaulted

00:10:01.860 --> 00:10:07.260
once in any loan and has consumed 80% of their limit,

00:10:08.560 --> 00:10:11.530
You should stop their limit and not give them any other limit.

00:10:12.230 --> 00:10:17.870
Or something to do with this segment of customers. You give them this offer

00:10:17.870 --> 00:10:21.580
because they're not going to abuse it. These are abusers.

00:10:22.390 --> 00:10:26.390
Once you get into doing this, what tends to happen is people,

00:10:26.850 --> 00:10:34.070
serious managers in the company, either evolve to rely on these models or they

00:10:34.070 --> 00:10:35.670
start feeling very insecure.

00:10:36.020 --> 00:10:39.250
Because if you're a risk guy and now there's a model who's telling you what

00:10:39.250 --> 00:10:41.010
to do, then what do you do next?

00:10:41.700 --> 00:10:46.340
Take another example, customers, hyper-personalization of customers.

00:10:46.340 --> 00:10:50.020
We have different types of customers, some who invest in money market funds,

00:10:50.020 --> 00:10:53.920
who are doing a brokerage company, some who take loans, some who use a card,

00:10:54.300 --> 00:10:56.600
and some who go in to do e-commerce.

00:10:57.130 --> 00:11:02.700
Very, very soon with generative AI, we'll be able to hyper-personalize the screen

00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:09.880
on the app so that every customer gets the perfect use cases that he wants to

00:11:09.880 --> 00:11:11.950
use. You couldn't do that earlier.

00:11:12.540 --> 00:11:20.950
SAS models, we had HR systems that we were renting out from a third-party provider.

00:11:22.280 --> 00:11:28.450
Two years ago, I wanted to develop our own HR system because it fits into our

00:11:28.450 --> 00:11:31.400
incentives, into our employee management.

00:11:33.650 --> 00:11:38.080
It would take us a year and a half to develop. Now it takes us 60 days to develop.

00:11:38.530 --> 00:11:41.110
And perfect to our needs, perfect to what we want.

00:11:41.720 --> 00:11:46.610
So you can't be skeptical. It's game-changing. And I highly,

00:11:46.610 --> 00:11:53.080
highly recommend any corporate who deals with a lot of data to start applying

00:11:53.740 --> 00:11:57.680
large language models within there and to get teams who are very,

00:11:57.680 --> 00:11:59.370
very experienced in that field.

00:12:00.420 --> 00:12:04.750
What you're talking about so far is mainly systems within the company, correct?

00:12:05.950 --> 00:12:10.510
How you're using AI at the moment. Is it helping you interact with your customer

00:12:10.510 --> 00:12:13.570
as well? Is it changing the way you interact with customers?

00:12:14.240 --> 00:12:20.450
100 percent how do we interact with customers through the app through an individual

00:12:20.450 --> 00:12:22.820
either on the street or in a call center

00:12:23.960 --> 00:12:30.210
call center all calls are transcribed right now so any call that's happening in the call center

00:12:30.880 --> 00:12:35.560
we there's a large language model that's reading it and if you have a problem

00:12:35.560 --> 00:12:39.640
you know if it's a one-off problem or it's a systematic problem you can also

00:12:39.640 --> 00:12:43.130
know if the agent is a good agent or a bad agent.

00:12:43.660 --> 00:12:47.690
All this is done by machines, not by managers. So ultimately,

00:12:47.690 --> 00:12:53.280
ultimately, ultimately, we will all rely on Google Maps.

00:12:54.880 --> 00:12:55.860
And that's a big problem.

00:12:57.230 --> 00:13:02.260
Yeah. Thanks, Mounir. Amy, I'd like to move on to you. So you

00:13:03.570 --> 00:13:08.790
as being in the media, you wear a lot of different hats. You've got your entrepreneur

00:13:08.790 --> 00:13:13.700
hat, your storytelling hat, and so many others.

00:13:13.920 --> 00:13:16.970
How do you view AI?

00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:22.950
Is it just a tool that makes you able to amplify certain parts of your business?

00:13:25.300 --> 00:13:27.670
I always think of you as a writer first and foremost.

00:13:27.670 --> 00:13:28.800
Thank you, Malak. I appreciate that.

00:13:28.800 --> 00:13:36.050
So for me, you're always a writer first. So, you know, the human touch is hard to replicate.

00:13:36.190 --> 00:13:36.780
So true.

00:13:36.780 --> 00:13:39.340
So how do you deal with AI?

00:13:39.700 --> 00:13:46.940
I will tell you. First of all, Lamia, Hania, wow. Thank you so much for this. This is amazing.

00:13:48.160 --> 00:13:50.700
And E+, although usually that mention is biflus.

00:13:53.480 --> 00:13:58.800
So I was watching, actually speaking to exactly what you're saying.

00:13:58.800 --> 00:14:02.560
I was watching an interview the other day with a prolific author.

00:14:03.420 --> 00:14:07.010
And one of the first questions the interviewer asked, which is a typical question

00:14:07.010 --> 00:14:12.760
now, is they ask the author, well, do you use AI when you're writing?

00:14:13.510 --> 00:14:16.590
And this is one of the best answers I've ever heard. The author looks at the

00:14:16.590 --> 00:14:18.280
journalist and said, well, no,

00:14:18.620 --> 00:14:23.310
why would I? It seems to me like getting someone else to have sex for you.

00:14:24.880 --> 00:14:29.060
And I will tell you something, as a writer, Malak, as a journalist,

00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:38.780
as someone who has worked in media and the creative economy my entire life, I felt that viscerally.

00:14:40.240 --> 00:14:44.510
I know this is a room full of suits, but we're all creatives and we all create.

00:14:45.070 --> 00:14:49.700
And I think we'd all agree that the human instinct to create,

00:14:49.700 --> 00:14:56.140
that desire to do so, has very little to do with the final outcome or the final

00:14:56.330 --> 00:14:58.120
product. It's the process.

00:14:59.200 --> 00:15:06.620
It's that wrestling with the idea, the process of discovery and following your instinct and failing

00:15:07.700 --> 00:15:12.250
and figuring it out and eventually making the kind of breakthrough that oftentimes

00:15:12.250 --> 00:15:15.370
will get you somewhere completely unexpected.

00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:17.280
What happened to the guitar?

00:15:17.650 --> 00:15:22.000
What did happen to the guitar? I don't know. I didn't prepare that answer.

00:15:23.660 --> 00:15:26.790
What happened to the guitar? What happened? Where is Axl Rose?

00:15:26.790 --> 00:15:28.760
Where is...

00:15:28.760 --> 00:15:30.810
I mean, it's all being generated by machine.

00:15:30.810 --> 00:15:33.310
What I want to say is music has evolved.

00:15:33.310 --> 00:15:33.860
Music has evolved.

00:15:33.980 --> 00:15:37.920
Creation has evolved. But we have to adapt to the new wave.

00:15:38.390 --> 00:15:42.580
And so, exactly. And so, I mean, so at the end of the day, I mean,

00:15:42.580 --> 00:15:45.990
creativity, I don't... Creativity isn't about production.

00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:50.330
It's about transformation. It's about how it transforms the creator and how

00:15:50.330 --> 00:15:54.120
it transforms the person consuming the creation.

00:15:54.680 --> 00:15:59.700
And I say this as a really important caveat, because in media

00:16:00.210 --> 00:16:05.000
and in storytelling, I think in journalism, especially, I think it's very,

00:16:05.360 --> 00:16:10.450
very important that we do not reduce creativity to productivity.

00:16:11.140 --> 00:16:13.480
And I'm going to put that out there and then I'm going to say,

00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:20.140
however, as a media owner and as an entrepreneur, I am incredibly optimistic

00:16:20.140 --> 00:16:22.680
about what AI is going to do to our industry.

00:16:23.230 --> 00:16:27.790
Because I don't think AI is about replacing creativity at all.

00:16:27.970 --> 00:16:30.230
But then how, Amy? What are you excited about?

00:16:30.230 --> 00:16:35.640
I'll tell you. I think it's about removing the friction around creativity,

00:16:35.640 --> 00:16:37.570
around storytelling and around journalism.

00:16:37.860 --> 00:16:42.000
At MO4, we operate across multiple storytelling and media platforms,

00:16:42.310 --> 00:16:45.790
and we have been aggressively integrating AI into our

00:16:46.110 --> 00:16:50.420
workflow processes, our content distribution processes, our content adaptation

00:16:50.420 --> 00:16:54.410
processes, parsing the vast amounts of information and content that comes through

00:16:54.410 --> 00:16:56.170
our doors every single day.

00:16:56.590 --> 00:17:02.760
What we're doing is really removing so much of the administrative and mechanical

00:17:02.760 --> 00:17:04.850
labor around storytelling.

00:17:04.850 --> 00:17:13.570
But I certainly am doing so with the very clear mission and intention of creating

00:17:13.570 --> 00:17:19.330
the space and the time for the humans and the extraordinary talents in the room.

00:17:19.690 --> 00:17:22.800
And I respectfully disagree with Dr. Mohamed Fahmi earlier.

00:17:22.800 --> 00:17:26.990
I believe, especially in my industry, there's extraordinary talent available.

00:17:27.370 --> 00:17:30.250
Maybe we're just not always utilizing them in the right way.

00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:36.650
And I'm using that time that we're creating in order to allow the humans to

00:17:36.650 --> 00:17:42.770
do what the machines or to allow the humans to leverage what the machines don't have.

00:17:43.050 --> 00:17:45.730
And what's that? Emotional nuance.

00:17:46.710 --> 00:17:47.990
Cultural intuition. Intuition.

00:17:49.340 --> 00:17:52.580
Human perspective, investigative thinking.

00:17:53.080 --> 00:17:59.040
And all of that plays into a massive shift in the media industry where,

00:17:59.450 --> 00:18:02.790
you know, traditionally the internet was rewarding.

00:18:02.790 --> 00:18:05.590
What was it rewarding? It was rewarding when it came to content.

00:18:05.590 --> 00:18:12.410
It was rewarding volume, speed, clickability, and optimization.

00:18:12.410 --> 00:18:17.240
The very basics of the digital economy was forcing people like me to produce

00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:19.920
more and more and more content just to survive.

00:18:22.920 --> 00:18:30.320
But what does the AI do? The AI completely dismantles that formula because suddenly you and I

00:18:30.760 --> 00:18:35.450
and the man on the street can create an infinite, infinite amounts of content

00:18:35.870 --> 00:18:38.910
at the click of a finger. And what happens when the content is infinite?

00:18:39.090 --> 00:18:43.440
It loses its value. Any commodity loses its value once it's infinite, right?

00:18:43.830 --> 00:18:46.220
So then what has value instead?

00:18:47.300 --> 00:18:51.380
Trust. Trust becomes valuable. Taste.

00:18:52.210 --> 00:18:57.040
Taste becomes valuable. Human discernment becomes valuable.

00:18:57.930 --> 00:19:01.730
And you can see that already in the rise of personality-led journalism,

00:19:01.730 --> 00:19:06.550
your favorite podcast hosts, someone like Siyad. I saw Shady Sharif in the room earlier on.

00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.560
You can see it in perspective-led news programming.

00:19:10.780 --> 00:19:15.330
You can see it in the rise of independent media ecosystems, such as Substack.

00:19:15.510 --> 00:19:17.140
Who in here is familiar with Substack?

00:19:18.300 --> 00:19:19.360
Go check out Substack.

00:19:19.820 --> 00:19:21.980
Go check out Amy's Substack.

00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:23.880
Thank you, Malak, for doing that on my blog.

00:19:23.880 --> 00:19:26.720
But, Amy, I want to just pause for a minute in what you're saying.

00:19:28.230 --> 00:19:36.310
What I'm hearing from you is AI is a tool for amplification, for reaching further.

00:19:36.480 --> 00:19:36.640
Yeah.

00:19:36.850 --> 00:19:39.540
But it's not a tool for creating.

00:19:39.730 --> 00:19:39.900
No.

00:19:40.260 --> 00:19:42.480
The creation is still a human endeavor.

00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:45.270
I'll tell you what's going to happen. And I believe this is going to happen.

00:19:45.270 --> 00:19:49.390
And this is the most important thing, especially when it comes to the Middle East.

00:19:49.390 --> 00:19:52.830
And there is a lot of conversation in the room today. And I understand given

00:19:52.830 --> 00:19:57.770
the type of crowd around the tech and the financing and the payment systems.

00:19:58.200 --> 00:20:02.430
There's a big conversation that remains missing. And it's horrifying if we don't

00:20:02.430 --> 00:20:04.950
pay attention to it. And it's around our stories.

00:20:05.450 --> 00:20:08.260
So, yes, it is a tool. But what we need to do is...

00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:11.350
Let me pause on that because I do want to go into that. I want to talk about

00:20:11.350 --> 00:20:14.850
that in a lot more detail. Okay. But I'm just going to pause and I'm going to

00:20:14.850 --> 00:20:18.120
move on to Ali. Sure, go for it. Mounir, can you hold your thought?

00:20:18.580 --> 00:20:19.620
Just to react to it.

00:20:19.620 --> 00:20:20.160
Okay, go ahead.

00:20:20.620 --> 00:20:22.220
I'm in complete disagreement.

00:20:23.360 --> 00:20:25.500
Good. This makes for a good discussion.

00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:26.750
I'm in complete...

00:20:30.600 --> 00:20:36.920
I think AI is in a very, very early stage of the journey.

00:20:37.420 --> 00:20:42.160
And we have already seen people falling in love with their AI agent.

00:20:42.690 --> 00:20:44.830
I mean, if a man wakes up in the morning

00:20:47.840 --> 00:20:52.590
and he sees a beautiful sunrise and they say, oh, what a beautiful sunrise.

00:20:53.010 --> 00:20:56.640
And then his wife tells him, shut up. I want to sleep. You're waking me up.

00:20:57.080 --> 00:20:59.740
But then you have a voice, an AI agent is telling you,

00:21:00.840 --> 00:21:06.130
With exactly the right words, with exactly the right tone you want to hear.

00:21:06.340 --> 00:21:08.330
It's like that movie. What was that movie called?

00:21:08.330 --> 00:21:13.620
It's fabulous. And then suddenly you have a human being who's developing an

00:21:13.620 --> 00:21:17.450
emotional connection to an agent, to a bot.

00:21:17.550 --> 00:21:18.730
But that's, yeah.

00:21:18.730 --> 00:21:19.660
This is happening.

00:21:19.660 --> 00:21:20.160
Yeah, I know.

00:21:20.160 --> 00:21:24.130
What I want to say, and I'm just contesting the emotional connection part.

00:21:24.460 --> 00:21:26.000
So what's happening? And it's scary.

00:21:26.350 --> 00:21:30.360
And we have to acknowledge it's happening. and people, very lonely people in

00:21:30.360 --> 00:21:35.480
countries where you don't have a lot of sun, get depressed and they connect with these agents.

00:21:36.290 --> 00:21:41.810
We read in the newspaper that you have an individual who's filing against the

00:21:41.810 --> 00:21:45.050
government to have the AI agent vote.

00:21:46.220 --> 00:21:51.690
You have this. This exists. And you have people who are killing themselves because

00:21:51.690 --> 00:21:52.970
they're in love with the AI agent.

00:21:53.730 --> 00:21:57.140
This is happening. So emotions happening. Creativity

00:21:58.190 --> 00:22:03.230
I'm very, very sad to tell you if I'm redesigning my house and I put six of

00:22:03.230 --> 00:22:07.680
the top designers I like and I throw it into the bot and I tell them I want

00:22:07.930 --> 00:22:10.370
to develop a 400 square meter house

00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:13.750
inspired by these four architects.

00:22:14.090 --> 00:22:20.290
Please design the ping pong. I have a design. Oh, I don't like one, two, three, four. Okay.

00:22:21.630 --> 00:22:27.180
One year from now, the agent will know exactly, I won't even need to probe which

00:22:27.180 --> 00:22:28.690
are the four architects I like.

00:22:28.690 --> 00:22:30.750
I think Inji might have something to say about that.

00:22:30.780 --> 00:22:35.030
By the way, I think I just want to add one line. Hang on, you're both right,

00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:38.880
and you're going to converge to some point in the future with both tracks.

00:22:38.880 --> 00:22:42.060
Yeah, yeah. Okay? There's a path for both directions, I think.

00:22:42.180 --> 00:22:47.450
I completely agree with both of you, okay? And I don't think that these are opposite opinions.

00:22:47.690 --> 00:22:51.100
These are two opinions in parallel tracks That will continue to go

00:22:51.100 --> 00:22:58.870
down the road. Absolutely. Thanks, Mounir Amir Nice to have you with us. I'd like

00:22:58.870 --> 00:23:02.540
to know your perspective On how you see

00:23:03.860 --> 00:23:07.640
AI being delivered to customers

00:23:10.100 --> 00:23:15.770
through the telecom networks generally. I know that 5G is being rolled out in Egypt and beyond.

00:23:16.120 --> 00:23:24.550
How are you seeing that rollout as enabling or helping to bring AI to a wider group of people?

00:23:25.500 --> 00:23:29.110
Thank you, Malak. Actually, the AI has been in the telecom industry for a while,

00:23:29.110 --> 00:23:32.780
but now the most exciting about it is the next phase.

00:23:33.110 --> 00:23:39.000
When we have the AI coming into the people's life, impacting the economy of

00:23:39.000 --> 00:23:41.540
the country, the GDP, how this will be reflected.

00:23:41.540 --> 00:23:45.880
And the good news that we have welcomed 5G in Egypt last year as a first phase

00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:52.540
is the early stage of 5G with a solid roadmap being put by the government down

00:23:52.540 --> 00:23:53.860
the road for the coming five years.

00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:58.220
So what have came to Egypt recently is what we call it the 5G non-standalone.

00:23:58.860 --> 00:24:03.330
This one of the technology is kind of 4G++ Plus, that gives more speed with

00:24:03.330 --> 00:24:08.240
some applications that's interesting maybe for the new generations. If we talk about

00:24:10.830 --> 00:24:16.180
Gaming industry, virtual reality, and this stuff, that high speed is coming.

00:24:16.180 --> 00:24:19.230
But what is most interesting is what's coming next.

00:24:19.570 --> 00:24:23.820
When we talk about the 5G standalone, where we will have the connected devices,

00:24:23.820 --> 00:24:27.810
we connect the communities. Speaking about Egypt, we know, for example,

00:24:27.810 --> 00:24:31.720
that agriculture is a key pillar of the Egyptian economy.

00:24:32.390 --> 00:24:39.120
And I think it's important to all that the world will be facing today or will face a food

00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:40.870
crisis and a water crisis. Not enough food or enough water for the people.

00:24:41.190 --> 00:24:47.170
And think about it now when we, by 5G, enabling the connectivity of the agricultural

00:24:47.170 --> 00:24:51.630
industry of doing this efficiency, more production, more productivity,

00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:54.000
control of the waste of the water.

00:24:54.280 --> 00:24:59.330
How this will look like in the economy? How this will help Egypt in standing

00:24:59.330 --> 00:25:03.110
up in its global position when it comes to that specific use case.

00:25:03.600 --> 00:25:06.850
Many, many use cases are coming down the road. For example, when we talk about

00:25:06.850 --> 00:25:11.290
the medical sector, they are talking about like robot doing and operations.

00:25:11.580 --> 00:25:15.890
Does the government need to invest in each and every village to have a fully equipped hospital?

00:25:16.220 --> 00:25:18.970
I don't think so. Maybe you will have it centralized with the AI,

00:25:19.280 --> 00:25:22.960
enabling the people living maybe in upper Egypt, in Sahel, or anywhere,

00:25:23.210 --> 00:25:26.340
to do the operations with a doctor maybe sitting in Cairo or somewhere else.

00:25:26.340 --> 00:25:28.160
That's already happening, not in Egypt,

00:25:28.160 --> 00:25:33.410
But in other places. That's what's coming to Egypt. hopefully with a 5G standalone introduction.

00:25:33.690 --> 00:25:38.940
A lot of examples, for example, a lot of production improvement is

00:25:39.800 --> 00:25:43.900
happening in the industry where you have a 5G-enabled factories that's using

00:25:43.900 --> 00:25:49.030
AI completely to improve the production and increase it and enhance it.

00:25:49.330 --> 00:25:53.390
That will help also the economy. And there are clear statistics talking about

00:25:53.390 --> 00:25:57.800
the GDP improvement by introducing 5G using the AI in such use cases.

00:25:57.800 --> 00:26:01.740
So if we're looking to the future, the future looks very optimistic for me.

00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:04.330
I believe that Egypt can leverage on this much more.

00:26:04.620 --> 00:26:06.810
And there's no doubt that telecom is the conduit.

00:26:07.460 --> 00:26:08.900
To the people for all of this.

00:26:09.010 --> 00:26:11.390
Exactly. So we were providing only

00:26:11.390 --> 00:26:14.980
connectivity. Today, we are going connectivity, speed, and the latency.

00:26:15.310 --> 00:26:18.550
You will have billions of devices connected, not like before.

00:26:18.780 --> 00:26:22.490
It's not only about us as end users using our mobile for connectivity.

00:26:22.820 --> 00:26:24.470
You will connect each and every device.

00:26:24.830 --> 00:26:30.220
You will connect a drone watching the corpse. You are connecting devices watching

00:26:30.220 --> 00:26:32.270
the statistics across many industries.

00:26:32.470 --> 00:26:34.880
So it's a revolution in my view.

00:26:35.190 --> 00:26:38.700
It's coming and Egypt is planning to leverage into this one,

00:26:38.950 --> 00:26:44.820
especially with the digital vision and roadmap that we have 2030 led by the government.

00:26:45.080 --> 00:26:49.530
Yes.Thank you, Amer. Thank you. Karima, I'd like to move on to you.

00:26:49.890 --> 00:26:55.300
And we have 12 minutes left for the entire panel. So can we try and keep it

00:26:55.300 --> 00:26:58.630
to five so that we can then just open up to all of us? Sure.

00:27:00.490 --> 00:27:08.090
You are a VC and you're aware of a lot of what the market is looking for around us here.

00:27:08.810 --> 00:27:12.890
You've spoken of the need to create a healthy and dynamic private sector as

00:27:12.890 --> 00:27:16.850
a key to moving forward with innovation and sustainable growth.

00:27:17.760 --> 00:27:23.570
Take us on that journey of where the private sector needs to be in order for

00:27:24.390 --> 00:27:28.400
it to be a delivery mechanism for all this new technology.

00:27:29.350 --> 00:27:34.800
Thank you very much, Malak, for asking this question. And just for a quick commentary

00:27:36.140 --> 00:27:37.480
on the debate, I agree with Ahmed.

00:27:37.880 --> 00:27:41.220
It's two opinions, but it's also related to the user interface.

00:27:41.480 --> 00:27:45.810
When we have hybrid machines that are now mimicking more and more humans,

00:27:46.060 --> 00:27:49.560
this is where, again, in the next 10 years when we see this deployment,

00:27:49.840 --> 00:27:53.040
we can find a middle ground in that opinion.

00:27:53.420 --> 00:27:57.860
But to your questions about the private sector, and this goes back to the panel,

00:27:58.400 --> 00:28:00.810
I had the pleasure to moderate. It's really the practice.

00:28:01.110 --> 00:28:05.350
And as I started the conversation by saying that VCs and investors,

00:28:05.350 --> 00:28:09.320
regardless of the type of capital, are looking for use cases,

00:28:09.320 --> 00:28:14.990
are looking for healthy growth revenues, this is when we expect the private sector to step in.

00:28:16.360 --> 00:28:20.920
I've studied, and you mentioned, a trip to the US. I spent three weeks in Boston

00:28:20.920 --> 00:28:24.580
and Cambridge, actually, finishing a fellowship that I was doing.

00:28:24.580 --> 00:28:29.240
And part of the studies that I was doing is really study the five stakeholder

00:28:29.240 --> 00:28:36.380
model that makes an ecosystem healthy. And it's an MIT model that is proprietary to them.

00:28:36.690 --> 00:28:40.680
And the five stakeholders are first the entrepreneurs, my favorites,

00:28:40.680 --> 00:28:42.570
and the founders themselves who are leading.

00:28:43.620 --> 00:28:49.780
The government is playing a huge role in this. The venture capital or the risk capital and the

00:28:50.830 --> 00:28:55.290
Again, the private sector, the corporates, and the fifth one is the universities.

00:28:55.290 --> 00:29:01.120
And I actually listed them in our strength and weakest stakeholder when it comes

00:29:01.120 --> 00:29:05.930
to a market like Egypt, with the lowest scoring stakeholders being the corporates

00:29:05.930 --> 00:29:07.190
and then the universities.

00:29:07.510 --> 00:29:13.250
Again, to Dr. Mohamed Fahmi, which I actually agree, Amy, he was talking about the PhD talents.

00:29:13.250 --> 00:29:18.340
These are the researchers in the labs that are decreasing. It's not the tech

00:29:18.340 --> 00:29:22.940
talent and the talent as a whole for Egypt. So this is more on the deep tech

00:29:23.480 --> 00:29:28.170
talent that he's seeing decrease in universities as researchers and PhD holders.

00:29:29.170 --> 00:29:33.180
For these five stakeholders, the weakest two are in Egypt or in a market like

00:29:33.180 --> 00:29:37.060
Egypt are the corporates and the universities.

00:29:37.060 --> 00:29:41.010
For the private sector, we're looking at very small sizes.

00:29:41.010 --> 00:29:44.510
And when they're not thriving, when companies are not thriving,

00:29:44.510 --> 00:29:48.160
they're surviving. So they're not really investing. They're not doing like what

00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:52.690
Mounir has advised the corporates who are building with a lot of data.

00:29:52.920 --> 00:29:56.020
So the small SMEs are not doing that.

00:29:56.020 --> 00:29:59.890
So by enabling this space, so the smaller

00:30:00.860 --> 00:30:04.820
Companies and the small private sector, and enabling them with productivity

00:30:04.820 --> 00:30:09.450
tools and service efficiencies, we're not asking them to create their own models,

00:30:09.680 --> 00:30:14.370
but to feed the large language models with their proprietary data.

00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:20.260
So SMEs in Egypt have a very defensible situation because they're dealing with

00:30:20.260 --> 00:30:24.900
data that not the big ones they're not looking at. So they have unique data sets.

00:30:25.420 --> 00:30:28.160
What do they do with this? They don't do anything with it.

00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:33.580
So if they start appropriating it the right way, we can create sector-specific,

00:30:33.580 --> 00:30:37.290
let's say, I don't want to use the leaping because maybe this is too ambition,

00:30:37.290 --> 00:30:40.440
but sector-specific, let's say,

00:30:41.100 --> 00:30:45.480
I want to say, specialization for Egypt. So agricultural sector will thrive

00:30:45.480 --> 00:30:50.500
like this. So the small farmers and the aggregation of these SMEs that work

00:30:50.500 --> 00:30:51.840
in the service sector of this.

00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:57.550
The healthcare sector can thrive, maybe not. But for Egypt, it's agri and tourism,

00:30:57.550 --> 00:31:01.020
basically. So these two sectors can find the defensibility.

00:31:01.710 --> 00:31:05.520
So the private sector is important. And again, unfortunately,

00:31:05.520 --> 00:31:07.970
universities are very well underfunded.

00:31:08.210 --> 00:31:12.750
But if we look at something that we can do surgically and really quickly,

00:31:13.630 --> 00:31:19.020
fixing the adoption rate of SMEs and even the smaller cap, mid cap corporates

00:31:19.020 --> 00:31:26.590
in Egypt can really allow the startups and the general ecosystem to build on further.

00:31:27.100 --> 00:31:31.770
Thanks, Karima. There was a point that you made and Amy had made as well.

00:31:31.770 --> 00:31:35.420
And I think it's something that we didn't really talk about in a few of the other panels,

00:31:35.950 --> 00:31:40.760
which is how do we make sure that whatever AI is coming down the line

00:31:41.330 --> 00:31:47.870
is Arabized and is relevant to us, that we are not taking what is being given

00:31:47.870 --> 00:31:51.660
to us by Western-centric LLMs.

00:31:51.920 --> 00:31:54.660
Amy, you made this point to me privately.

00:31:55.130 --> 00:31:58.550
How do we feed the machine with our information?

00:31:58.800 --> 00:32:02.370
I mean, it goes back to what I was saying. We need to...

00:32:03.250 --> 00:32:08.170
Invest heavily in credible media institutions

00:32:08.740 --> 00:32:14.470
that are able to leverage AI to create the cost efficiencies to do what is essentially

00:32:14.470 --> 00:32:17.860
a very expensive task, which is empower

00:32:17.860 --> 00:32:23.450
our Arab journalists and our Arab storytellers to go out into the world

00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:27.310
and find our contemporary stories

00:32:27.980 --> 00:32:33.150
and tell them and package them in a way that does not already exist inside the computer.

00:32:33.150 --> 00:32:36.650
Because any information you're getting from AI is something that already exists

00:32:36.650 --> 00:32:39.010
somewhere in our consciousness.

00:32:39.140 --> 00:32:45.430
So who is going out and getting our Arab stories and investing them into our systems, number one.

00:32:45.710 --> 00:32:51.340
And number two, on the flip side, using these AI tools to be able to digitize

00:32:51.340 --> 00:32:54.700
our archives, to document our Arab histories.

00:32:54.700 --> 00:33:00.670
Accelerating at light speed of finding new drugs, novel solutions,

00:33:00.670 --> 00:33:04.970
and novel cures to different problems, number one. Number two...

00:33:05.980 --> 00:33:10.770
One of, I'm tying this back now to the earlier discussion of fintechs and financial inclusion, right?

00:33:11.020 --> 00:33:14.080
If we spend all our money on financial inclusion and bringing the bottom of

00:33:14.080 --> 00:33:17.910
the pyramid up, there's not going to be a pyramid anymore. It's going to be a flat line.

00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:21.960
We have to spend and invest in the top of the pyramid and lift up the top of

00:33:21.960 --> 00:33:26.450
the pyramid in this country, which is our top scientists, our top tech people,

00:33:26.680 --> 00:33:31.330
and lift them up and invest in those guys as much as we invest across the bottom of the pyramid.

00:33:31.570 --> 00:33:35.640
And that's really kind of the message that got lost. And I was really pounding

00:33:35.640 --> 00:33:37.750
the table on a couple of days ago in Kenya.

00:33:37.750 --> 00:33:40.330
Are you referring to a brain drain that's happening?

00:33:40.330 --> 00:33:43.380
No, I don't think there's a brain drain. I think actually there's a brain return.

00:33:43.590 --> 00:33:47.590
And I think the thing that I've been continuing proposing is we have to have

00:33:47.590 --> 00:33:49.410
a brain recirculation, okay?

00:33:49.620 --> 00:33:53.230
Where they go learn and come back, go train and come back, collaborate and come back.

00:33:53.230 --> 00:33:55.410
That was mentioned in a previous panel as well.

00:33:56.010 --> 00:34:02.470
My top semiconductor company, their six PhDs all got their PhDs in France and came back, okay?

00:34:02.600 --> 00:34:08.750
And when you mentioned robotics, this one company in Egypt is making the chips

00:34:09.030 --> 00:34:10.580
that they are now pitching to all

00:34:10.580 --> 00:34:13.470
the top robotics companies in the world because robots can see and hear.

00:34:13.770 --> 00:34:17.520
And with these chips that we designed here that are Egyptian company,

00:34:17.780 --> 00:34:19.300
robots can taste and smell.

00:34:21.190 --> 00:34:22.670
Karima, I cut you off earlier.

00:34:23.110 --> 00:34:27.150
No, no, it's fine. Please, go ahead. I just wanted to make a very quick distinction

00:34:27.150 --> 00:34:29.470
and bring this forward to inclusion as well.

00:34:30.170 --> 00:34:34.490
So maybe when you mentioned the Arab language and this, I want to step away

00:34:34.490 --> 00:34:38.480
from Arabic language because this is more on the generative model.

00:34:38.480 --> 00:34:42.500
But really what I didn't mean language as much as culture and heritage and identity.

00:34:42.500 --> 00:34:47.380
Exactly. So building on this, actually, so we spoke about the SMEs being also

00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:52.790
a potential opportunity for Egypt to grow its private sector capabilities for

00:34:52.790 --> 00:34:56.240
procurement and deployment of AI technologies.

00:34:56.590 --> 00:35:01.960
But what we have also is this data that is not present in the capital cities.

00:35:02.160 --> 00:35:06.850
So when you go in the muhafazat and you go to actually create use cases for,

00:35:06.850 --> 00:35:13.030
again, going back to the agri-space, for agricultural efficiencies and data sets.

00:35:13.030 --> 00:35:18.240
So when you create that and you will build your defensibility towards other

00:35:18.240 --> 00:35:22.100
solutions that can come in from abroad because they will train their models

00:35:22.290 --> 00:35:27.870
based on this very unique data sets that they can get from places where no one is.

00:35:29.080 --> 00:35:32.540
And the learning was that I was actually looking at in Africa.

00:35:32.540 --> 00:35:34.720
I got a partner title for Africa.

00:35:34.950 --> 00:35:39.170
And now my main concern is really going down to the governorates. So I'm pissed off.

00:35:39.630 --> 00:35:44.790
I pissed off so many people in my work now that we're looking at investing more deep down.

00:35:45.380 --> 00:35:48.540
But this is where I think Egypt can be.

00:35:48.590 --> 00:35:49.620
Thanks, Karima. Mounir?

00:35:49.930 --> 00:35:54.680
Malak, I think the debate is a real philosophical debate.

00:35:55.310 --> 00:36:00.150
And how do you preserve culture and identity? How do you storytell?

00:36:01.020 --> 00:36:04.820
I couldn't help but think when you're saying we need to...

00:36:04.930 --> 00:36:08.040
That you wanted to invest in media institutions? Is that what you were thinking, Mounir?

00:36:08.040 --> 00:36:11.600
100%. Okay, great. Let's talk after. I couldn't...

00:36:11.600 --> 00:36:11.890
Okay.

00:36:11.890 --> 00:36:14.640
There's a breakout room over there.

00:36:16.610 --> 00:36:22.880
I couldn't stop thinking about, are we documenting it because we're going to go obsolete?

00:36:23.260 --> 00:36:25.490
Or are we documenting it for what?

00:36:26.310 --> 00:36:35.890
And I really think the change is so dramatic and we're just starting to see the change.

00:36:36.300 --> 00:36:40.450
And three years down the line, when we look back, we're going to say,

00:36:40.890 --> 00:36:43.370
oh my God, how did all this happen in three years?

00:36:43.370 --> 00:36:48.030
That's exactly how I'm concluding, actually, because I think what we're witnessing

00:36:48.030 --> 00:36:53.920
now, we're at the very, very beginning of a very, very long journey. I want to thank you all.

00:36:54.630 --> 00:36:58.670
Thank you for a really great discussion we just began really there's a lot we

00:36:58.670 --> 00:37:04.930
can talk about but time constraints, thank you all very much and thank you Malak
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