AI from the Ground Up · Part 3
The AI Race
Not who wins it. What it is already doing to the world, and to us.
The end of the world is still up for debate. Rising prices, fake videos and jobs never advertised are already here.
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The rest of the series
- 01The Story of AI
- 02Why It Makes Things Up
- 03The AI RaceYou are here
About this lecture
The AI Race is the third lecture in Dr. Mohamed Maslooh's series AI from the Ground Up, given on 23 September 2026 at the Wednesday staff round of the Department of Pediatric Surgery, Kasr Al-Ainy, Cairo. It is not about who wins the race but about what the race is already doing to the world and to us: the money being spent, the warnings from the people building AI, the call in September 2026 to slow down and the political refusal that followed, real results in science and hospitals, and the long record of predictions that doctors would be replaced. Slides in English, delivered in Egyptian Arabic.
- Four companies are spending about $725 billion on AI in one year, and Meta alone plans $145 billion on data centres and servers.
- On 12 September 2026 Dario Amodei published an essay calling for the AI industry to slow down, and Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed, but on 14 September Donald Trump rejected slowing down, citing China.
- AI has already done things no one could: it helped read a scroll burned by Vesuvius in 79 AD without opening it, an OpenAI model disproved an Erdős guess from 1946, and Anthropic's AI found a 27-year-old security flaw in OpenBSD.
- In the Swedish MASAI breast screening trial of 105,934 women, AI-supported screening found 81 of every 100 cancers against 74 with two radiologists, with 44% fewer readings and the same rate of false alarms.
- Geoffrey Hinton said in 2016 that people should stop training radiologists, yet ten years later there are 10% more radiologists, average US radiologist pay rose 9% in a year, and 7,469 posts were advertised and unfilled in May 2026.
Questions
Will AI replace doctors?
Predictions that it would have been made for years, from Vinod Khosla in 2012 to Bill Gates in 2025. The clearest test is radiology: Geoffrey Hinton said in 2016 to stop training radiologists, yet there are now 10% more of them and thousands of unfilled posts. The lecture closes on the view that humans with AI will replace humans without AI.
How much are tech companies spending on AI?
According to the companies' own 2026 guidance cited in the lecture, four companies are spending about $725 billion in one year. Meta alone plans $145 billion on data centres and servers, Alphabet spent $44.9 billion in a single quarter, and OpenAI lost $12.3 billion in three months.
Does AI help detect breast cancer?
In the randomised MASAI trial in Sweden, with 105,934 women, AI that sorted and marked mammograms before radiologists read them found 81 of every 100 cancers at screening, against 74 when two radiologists read every mammogram. Radiologists did 44% fewer readings and false alarms were the same. It was one country, one AI system and experienced radiologists.
Did AI companies ask to slow down AI development?
Yes. On 12 September 2026 Anthropic's Dario Amodei published We Must Pace the Frontier, and Sam Altman and Elon Musk publicly agreed. Two days later Donald Trump rejected slowing down, saying China could otherwise win, and at the UN General Assembly on 22 September he said whoever wins superintelligence wins.
Who gave The AI Race lecture, and can I see the slides?
Dr. Mohamed Maslooh, a medical intern at Kasr Al-Ainy, gave it on 23 September 2026 as the third lecture of his series AI from the Ground Up, at the Wednesday staff round of the Department of Pediatric Surgery. The slides open free in any browser at maslooh.com/lectures/the-ai-race.