The revolution of artificial intelligence (AI) "can truly transform our country that suffered so much in the past, coming out of a deep economic crisis," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday at the GenAI Summit at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens.
Speaking to member of the AI Consultative Committee and Endeavor Greece Vice President Andreas Stavropoulos, Mitsotakis said that Greece definitely has a firmer foundation now, the economy is developing, and AI can and must provide a tremendous opportunity.
He said that Greece could use AI in several sectors, and he spoke of promoting an innovative AI ecosystem in Greece, as well as its use to improve government actions.
Referring to ways in which AI could tranform the educational process, the Greek PM noted that the coronavirus pandemic taught Greece that physical presence in schools cannot be replaced. He added that there are technologies in laboratories that replace human activity, and expressed the belief that this will affect certain jobs, while in other aspects of AI, such as in education, interactive screenshave been installed in all Greek classrooms, starting with 5th grade.
Mitsotakis also spoke of the importance of parental checks on electronic applications and expressed his concern as to the extent writing by hand or memorizing would be replaced now that children can find anything online. In other applications of AI, such as systems to forecast the weather, he said interesting developments are happening already.
"We have the human talent, and a government willing to try and train itself in how we may use AI to become more effective. We can do it, and when I look at what other countries do, one of our greater advantages is human talent; to utilize people active in the AI sector abroad, and bring them to Greece," Mitsotakis said.