AI in higher education ·

AI Is Not a Tool: Reflections on ICAIH 2026 in Lebanon

First published on LinkedIn, November 7, 2026.

Over two days at ICAIH 2026, the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK), speakers from across the region and beyond, spanning government, academia and business, took on AI from every angle. The full program is here: https://www.usek.edu.lb/icaih2026/program. I attended sessions throughout, and on November 6 I moderated Panel 1 of the PRME Regional Forum, on "Leadership, Responsibility and Ethics in the Age of AI": https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7523031023073546241/

I treat every conversation as a test of what I think I know. Here are my reflections on what I heard over two days, and where the evidence points.

It's not about skills. It's about the skill of questions. As you'd expect at a university, many attendees were young people preparing to enter the workforce. Many companies are hiring fewer juniors, in part because entry-level work is what AI is absorbing right now. Skills now expire faster than ever. What has a longer shelf life, for now, is a mind that questions, stays agile, and knows when to move on to the next problem.

Critical thinking and creativity are not our moat. GPT-4 gave more original answers than 151 people on standard tests of divergent thinking, and embodied AI may soon learn from the physical world the way we once did. Our current edge is not out-thinking it. It is knowing what to ask of it, for now.

That is why AI is not a tool. It is a thought partner and a conduit for creation, and it changes what is possible for a student in Kaslik as much as for a founder in Silicon Valley.

Yet fear is crowding out opportunity. AI is already letting tiny teams build billion-dollar companies, as Salim Ismail and Peter H. Diamandis argue in Exponential Organizations 2.0. Medvi is one example: a telehealth company run by one founder and his brother, which reportedly posted $401 million in sales in its first full year and is on track for $1.8 billion this year. Lebanon is rightly proud of its human capital, but human capital doing what it did before means far less than it used to. As in the parable of the talents, what matters is what we do with them. The right questions, aimed at the right problems, with enough velocity, can let one person build what once took a company. Enough of them could lift an economy, but only with the energy and compute to back them.

The same holds for the environment. AI's appetite for energy and water is real, and it calls for responsible use. But weighing AI only as a cost misses what it can unlock. On the Kardashev scale, a civilization reaches Type I when it can harness all the energy available on its planet, and humanity is not there yet. Getting there cleanly will take new physics, new materials and new sources of energy. In Solve Everything, Peter Diamandis and Alex Wissner-Gross argue AI could crack challenges like these within a decade. As Richard Bach wrote, argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. AI carries real dangers, and real promise. I'd rather deal in hope than in doom.

Privacy as we knew it is gone. Everyone worries about what AI will learn about them. News flash: if you carry a connected device, or simply live near one, you're already exposed. A neighbor's doorbell camera records you whether you agreed to it or not. The companies behind the hardware and software already know who you talk to, where you go and who you pay. For alarmists who want real cause for alarm, the next frontier is your thoughts. Meta's latest system decodes typed sentences from brain scans with 61% average word accuracy, and California already protects neural data by law. Opting out means economic exclusion. Opting in blindly has costs too. What it takes is awareness, and discipline.

Can we trust AI? Trust is a method, not a feeling. Trust, but verify. AI isn't all-knowing, and neither are we: we are inconsistent and biased. So neither side gets blind trust. Use AI to keep AI in check.

One place where that matters a great deal is with young people. Duty of care now includes the AI they use. Families from several countries who have lost children have taken AI companies to court, saying chatbots failed them when it mattered most. Wherever the legal responsibility lands, we all share the duty of care. We need to ask what their AI is saying to them, carefully and without giving up what the technology offers. That's easier said than done when we're all busy, but we can use AI to keep track of AI. Parents, schools, universities and companies all have a part to play.

Foresight. As a foresight practitioner, my discipline teaches me that there is never just one future. Foresight explores many possible futures rather than adhering to a single one, using tools like scenario planning, horizon scanning and the futures wheel. One way to visualize them is the futures cone, popularized by Joseph Voros. It runs outward from the probable to the plausible, the possible and even the preposterous, then asks which of them we prefer. And once we know what we prefer, we also know what we must not allow.

Some organizations, public and private, use AI mainly to research and benchmark what others have done. Learning from others has long been a safe way to prepare. But in an age of speed and technological convergence, where fields are solved and redefined at a pace we've never seen, it can limit where we end up. Thinking that worked in the world of the past may stop being relevant soon after it is written. AI can simulate many possible futures, work across vast amounts of data, and help build strategies infused with foresight. It starts with a different way of thinking.

Lebanon has too often waited for solutions from abroad. Everyone has a role in shaping what comes next. Not the same impact, but shared work.

For a conference hosted at a Catholic university, it is worth recalling what Catholic social teaching asks of us: to protect the dignity of every person and their access to what they need to live, learn and be well. AI can serve that, if we choose to build it that way.

Thank you to Danielle Khalife-Fraiha, PhD, Dean of the USEK Business School, for the invitation, and to Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) and the PRME Chapter Middle East for convening, under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Nawaf Salam, President of the Council of Ministers, two days of conversation that deserve to continue. I'm grateful to Nada Sarkis, PhD and Mohammad Makki, PhD, masters of ceremonies for Day 1 and Day 2. My thanks also to the partners and sponsors: MITAI Lebanon, the Association of Arab Universities, the Arab Economics and Business Schools Society, the ARAB ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS JOURNAL (AEBJ), the EdTech Syndicate in Lebanon (EdTechS), Abu Dhabi University, Stories Coffee and Mangomolo.

Michael Joseph is an AI expert and consultant with operations across the United States and EMEA. He is Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Epirroi and AI Advisor to the President of the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK).

I was glad to share the Panel 1 stage with Ronnie Hammad, Wissam Sabbagh, Patrick Nacouzi, Rany Sader, Anthony Tzes and Dr Dimitrios Diamantis, PhD.

Follow-up: Beyond the Faster Horse: AI Doesn't Need Our Ideas.

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