A medical conference in Orlando discusses the future of artificial intelligence in hospitals

The activities of the “AIMed26” conference, one of the most prominent international forums specialized in medical artificial intelligence, were launched in Orlando, Florida, yesterday (Wednesday), which continues from November 11 to 13, with the participation of an elite group of international experts, doctors, researchers, academics, leaders of health institutions, and developers of medical technologies.

An international scientific platform

The conference constitutes an international scientific platform that combines technological innovation and clinical experience, to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in health care, and the challenges facing its transition from laboratories and research centers to actual application within hospitals, with a focus on patient safety, smart systems governance, and human responsibility for medical decisions.

The conference places at the forefront of its concerns a question that goes beyond the capabilities of algorithms and their technical accuracy: How can health institutions benefit from artificial intelligence without compromising patient safety or weakening the role of the doctor and his professional responsibility?

From innovation to clinical application

The scientific program of the conference focuses on the evidence required before AI tools can be adopted in healthcare, the quality of clinical data, the limits of relying on algorithmic recommendations, as well as the regulatory and ethical challenges associated with the use of these technologies.

Today, Thursday, the program includes a keynote speech addressing the role of humans in the age of artificial intelligence, in addition to sessions examining how to deal with cases in which the recommendations of intelligent systems differ from the clinical judgment of the doctor.

Participants will also discuss experiences using artificial intelligence to predict sepsis in newborns, and what hospitals can learn from moving these applications from research studies to daily practice.

An American researcher of Syrian origins: Man is the focus of transformation

In a special statement to Asharq Al-Awsat, Dr. Nawar Al-Sharaa, an American researcher and academic of Syrian origins, associate professor of medicine and head of artificial intelligence applications in health data sciences at Georgetown University, confirmed that the importance of the conference lies in its focus on the practical reality of artificial intelligence applications, and not simply displaying their technical capabilities.

She said that the “AIMed 2026” conference focuses on “the reality of artificial intelligence applications: what succeeds, what falters, how to develop them, and the role of the pivotal human element.” She added that the conference brings together entrepreneurs, developers, engineers and doctors to exchange experiences and build practical partnerships that contribute to applying these technologies, expanding their positive impact and spreading their health benefits around the world.

Nawar Al-Sharaa is also the founding co-director of the Collaborative Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (AI CoLab), co-director of the Center for Biostatistics, Informatics and Data Science (CBIDS), and heads the Research Data Science Department at the MedStar Institute for Health Research. Its expertise in combining biostatistics, artificial intelligence and medical informatics reflects one of the key trends discussed at the conference, which is the importance of collaboration between different disciplines to transform technical innovations into usable tools in clinical settings.

When the algorithm differs with the doctor

One of the most prominent issues raised at the conference is how to deal with the difference between the doctor’s clinical judgment and the recommendations of artificial intelligence systems. As the use of these systems expands to analyze medical images, assess risks, and support treatment decisions, questions arise regarding the reliability of the results, their interpretability, and responsibility for the decisions based on them.

These challenges are not limited to the accuracy of the models, but also include the nature of the data used to train them, the extent to which they represent different population groups, and the ability of health institutions to monitor their performance after introducing them into daily practice.

The conference includes applied presentations that allow participants to learn about some new tools, in addition to discussions on the most prominent modern scientific research and the use of artificial intelligence in patient monitoring.

What does this mean for Arab hospitals?

These discussions are particularly important for Arab health institutions, which are increasingly moving towards adopting artificial intelligence technologies. A tool that achieves good results in an American or European hospital may not provide the same level of performance when used with patients whose demographic, linguistic, and health characteristics differ, or in institutions that rely on different systems for documenting medical data.

Hence the need to locally verify the performance of these systems, and evaluate their actual impact on clinical decisions and patient safety, before expanding their use.

The AIMed26 conference reflects a growing shift in the global discussion about medical artificial intelligence. The question is no longer limited to what algorithms can accomplish, but is also related to how to prove their usefulness, determine the limits of their use, and ensure that humans remain at the heart of medical decisions. The true success of artificial intelligence in medicine will not be measured by the number of algorithms entering hospitals, but rather by their ability to improve health care in a safe, responsible and verifiable manner.

Astronomers from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, have discovered the first known planet to gradually disappear from the field of observation, about a thousand light-years from Earth, after it was found that the gravity of another invisible planet causes a change in the direction of its orbit, making it disappear from telescopes for decades.

The researchers explained that the planet bears the name “TOI-2535 b,” and belongs to the category of giant gas planets known as “hot Jupiters,” which orbit at very close distances to their stars. The planet completes an orbit around its star every 8.25 days, compared to the 88 days it takes Mercury to orbit around the sun, according to the results published, Monday, in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters.”

Hot Jupiters are giant gas planets that resemble Jupiter in size and composition, but they orbit at very close distances from their stars, which makes their temperatures very high, and it takes some of them only a few days to complete one orbit around their stars.

The researchers monitored the planet's transit in front of its star several times over the course of seven years, before its observations stopped completely in 2026, but the planet did not actually disappear, but rather the direction of its orbit changed due to the gravity of a neighboring planet that scientists have not been able to monitor until now.

The discovery was based on data from NASA's TESS space telescope, which observed the TOI-2535 star system between April 2019 and March 2026. The telescope discovers planets outside the solar system by measuring the slight decrease in the brightness of stars when planets pass in front of them, a phenomenon known as "transit."

The data showed that the transit times of the planet were not regular, but were sometimes advanced or delayed by up to 6 hours. The transit periods also became shorter, and the decrease in the star's brightness gradually decreased until the transits disappeared completely.

The researchers explained these changes by the presence of another invisible planet, whose gravity affects the orbit of “TOI-2535 b”. The two planets interact gravitationally, causing their orbits to sway and their angle of inclination to change, similar to the movement of a rotating bulbul. As this change continues, the planet gradually moves out of the alignment range that allows its transit in front of its star to be monitored from Earth.

The researchers described the system as one of the most extreme examples of mutual influences between planets, noting that the planet may cross in front of its star again within 30 to 50 years, while the neighboring planet may become observable sooner.

This phenomenon is similar, in principle, to the reason why solar eclipses and lunar eclipses do not occur every month, as the moon’s orbit around the Earth is inclined to the level of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, and eclipses do not occur except when an exact alignment is achieved between the three bodies.

According to the team, the importance of the discovery is not limited to explaining the disappearance of the planet, but rather provides indications about how the “hot Jupiter” planets formed and moved to orbits close to their stars. Researchers propose two main possibilities for this: The first was that the planet was subjected to a violent gravitational disturbance that pushed it into an elliptical orbit, before gravitational interactions with its star gradually pulled it inward. The second is its movement into a close orbit with other planets inside the disk of gas and dust in which the planets are formed.

The researchers believe that the large wobble in the orbit of TOI-2535 b suggests the presence of complex gravitational interactions between the components of the system, which may have contributed over time to changing the direction of their orbits.

Today, it is difficult to browse any newspaper or follow the news, let alone participate in business discussions, without mentioning the topic of artificial intelligence. It is a topic that does not go away from the scene. Despite its breadth, it is full of layers, sub-themes, and various messages, which make talking about it always fresh and interesting, as Thomas Chamorro-Premuzic wrote*.

3 Attitudes towards artificial intelligence

As Garrison Lovely points out in his wonderful book Obsolete, people's attitudes toward AI can be classified into 3 categories:

- “Accelerators”: Those who adopt a utopian outlook, believing that artificial intelligence will solve all our problems, and thus demand an acceleration of the pace of its development and development.

- “The Worried”: On the other hand, we find the “Worriers” who believe that artificial intelligence may lead to the extinction of humans, or at least expect that it will have devastating effects on our lives and businesses.

- “Critics”: There are also “critics” who question most of the common claims about artificial intelligence - whether positive or negative - and some of them even see - in a proposition that may be the most controversial - that artificial intelligence receives much more appreciation than it deserves.

Focus on aspects that AI cannot do

Since no one has data about the future, we will not side with any of these camps here; Only the future can clarify matters, and here we mean the future over the next two or three decades, not 2027 or 2028. In fact, excessive preoccupation with the future may be an unhealthy strategy; It distracts us from dealing with the problems and challenges of the present; Among them is how to maintain our importance and professional value, in an era in which artificial intelligence undoubtedly performs many of the tasks of the “knowledge economy” that were previously limited to human intelligence.

As I predicted in my book “I, Human,” the growing ability of artificial intelligence to compete with human skills is not only redefining what a human is; It also forces us to focus double on the aspects that artificial intelligence cannot do, in order to ensure that we remain competitive in the labor market.

Key indicators

So, how can you assess your employability and career success in today's age of artificial intelligence? What are the positive signs that your job will not be replaced or obsolete by AI?

Here are 5 key indicators to take into consideration:

1- Your job is inherently “atypical” (or “chaotic”): As Luis Garricano, a researcher at the London School of Economics, points out, one of the best ways to resist automation is for your job to be chaotic, unpredictable, or “atypical.” In fact, the value of artificial intelligence lies primarily in automating tasks, but automation can only occur after standardizing tasks.

In contrast, if you try to automate chaos, you will only get more chaos on a larger scale. This should not be confused with having a disorganized or chaotic mentality - a mentality that makes even organized and predictable things seem chaotic - rather, what is meant is the nature of work, which is objectively characterized by unpredictability, complexity, and the absence of repetition. Or in other words: work that deviates from routine patterns!

Love of intellectual curiosity

2- You have a “mind that longs for knowledge.” As my colleagues and I have explained, contemporary career paths require, in addition to a strong work ethic and social skills, high levels of intellectual curiosity. This is even more important in the age of artificial intelligence, which reduces incentives to develop or invest in human curiosity. Why learn if you can get an answer to any question with the push of a button through generative AI tools?

In this context, generative AI can be considered “fast food” on an intellectual level; It is available around the clock and provides you with what makes you feel satisfied quickly, easily and inexpensively, but it lacks real nutritional value and may cause addiction.

A new cultural adaptation to protect human mental abilities from atrophy

Just as our hunter-gatherer ancestors did not need desks or gym memberships (because they were active all day and ate only healthy, nutritious foods... as long as they made the effort to obtain them!), it is conceivable that their descendants may need to develop new cultural adaptations to protect their mental faculties from atrophy. For example: We may have to resort to “thinking retreats” to stimulate parts of the brain that have almost become dormant, as a result of the total reliance on artificial intelligence to accomplish all intellectual tasks.

But until we reach that stage, curiosity will continue to motivate some people to be more active in thinking and learning, and these are the ones who have hope. It is worth noting that this will also give them a greater ability to understand and benefit from artificial intelligence, including using it for the purposes of enhancing human capabilities.

Enjoy the spirit of leadership

3- Have an entrepreneurial mindset: At a time when employers are trying to understand the impact of artificial intelligence on their organizations and jobs, some are finding ways to benefit from the radical innovation and change potential that this intelligence provides. This is not just about delegating boring or tedious tasks - the true value of AI does not lie in the tasks it automates; Rather, it is in how people exploit the time that is saved - and it extends to experimenting and testing new ideas and innovations. Simply put, people with an entrepreneurial mindset see opportunities that others do not notice, and they move faster than others to seize these opportunities by bridging the gap between supply and demand.

Employing artificial intelligence in launching expensive projects

For example, in the age of artificial intelligence, a single individual can launch a business that previously required a small army of employees; It can use artificial intelligence to conduct market research, develop products, build websites, launch marketing campaigns, and manage customer relationships. And even provide support services to customers as well. Likewise, professionals can turn their expertise into new products and services, identify unmet customer needs, or experiment with business models that were previously too expensive or time-consuming to test.

In this sense, AI is not just a tool to accomplish existing tasks faster or more cheaply; Rather, it is an opportunity to do things that were previously impossible, or at least economically unfeasible. The crucial difference here is that although AI makes implementing ideas easier than ever before, it does not necessarily guarantee that individuals will be able to come up with good ideas in the first place, let alone decide which ones are worth pursuing and implementing.

Enhancing human capabilities

4- The employer’s commitment to “enhancing” human capabilities instead of “automating”: Most organizations promise their employees “prospects of enhancement.” This means - in essence - an ideal world in which jobs become more exciting, fun and rewarding, and employees become more productive thanks to the presence of artificial intelligence as a partner or supporting intelligence. However, many employers are abandoning this vision, instead tempted to automate and eliminate entry-level jobs, seeking to show a return on investment from AI.

Fortunately, there are still some employers who have not given up on this approach; So you can consider yourself lucky and less at risk of being replaced by automation, if your employer is genuinely seeking ways to enhance human capabilities rather than machines replacing humans in the age of artificial intelligence. As always, choosing your employer (and manager) carefully may have an impact on your career path that is more important than the skills, personality traits, or talents you possess.

Artificial intelligence will never match human capabilities

5- The possibility of achieving “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) is less than technology enthusiasts think: As Garrison Lovely explains in his book “Obsolete,” much of the debate about the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity is based on futuristic assumptions that are presented as if they are established facts. In particular, the idea that AI will inevitably evolve from its current, impressive but imperfect, systems to “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) that can match or surpass humans in almost every cognitive domain is a prediction, not an established scientific fact.

In fact, there is a fundamental difference between building machines capable of performing an increasing number of intellectual tasks, and creating machines that have the ability to think, deduce, learn, and adapt with flexibility comparable to human capabilities. Especially in unfamiliar situations. Of course, this does not mean that achieving AGI is impossible, nor does it mean that we should ignore the real risks of AI just because some of its most ardent proponents confuse science with science fiction. Also, achieving general artificial intelligence is not a prerequisite for artificial intelligence to be able to displace millions of workers from their jobs.

No one knows when artificial general intelligence will appear