Israel Hayom profiles BINA's founder: "AI is the most powerful tool I've ever had"

One of Israel's largest dailies, Israel Hayom, has published a profile of Dr. Asher Knippel, founder of BINA CYINNOVATION HUB — running it under the line: "AI is the most powerful tool there's ever been": the 82-year-old Israeli leading a revolution in the Middle East.

The piece traces an unusual arc. Before Larnaca, Asher advised international banks, lectured at Cambridge on financial crime, and wrote four bestselling finance books. In 2026 he chose, at 82, to begin what he calls the most fascinating chapter of his life: founding BINA — a Cypriot non-profit built so that the AI revolution would not stay the property of the strong, but reach exactly the people most likely to be left behind.

BINA was born so this revolution would also reach the people no one is thinking about.

From a private house he dedicated to public use, the hub teaches without intimidating jargon — older adults learning at their own pace, students in Cypriot schools, communities on the margins, and people with disabilities, for whom the team makes home visits. It runs a daily newsroom that publishes free AI and health briefs every morning in five languages: English, Hebrew, Greek, Russian and Polish.

Information saves lives only when it arrives in the language a person dreams in.

To Asher, AI is a neutral tool that humanity has to steer toward good — "fire can warm a house or burn it down, but no one misses the world before fire." He describes markets, his digital painting, and AI as the same craft at heart: pattern recognition. Eight decades in, he says, intuition and analysis are not rivals but partners — and the final call stays human.

AI is the most powerful tool I've ever had — but the hand on the trigger stays human.

The profile does not look away from the cost. Asher lost his young daughter Shahar, his wife Bat Ami in 2017, and his son Sagi in 2018. Turning his home into a community hub became an act of remembrance — and giving became his answer to grief.

In the end, what remains is not what you accumulated, but what you gave.

His ambition now is to grow BINA from a local network into a global model that connects communities across countries. We're grateful to Israel Hayom for the coverage, and to everyone who continues to make the hub what it is.

Read the full profile (in Hebrew) at Israel Hayom.