Next week the “digital assistant” of gov.gr – the Greek government’s entry into AI – will be presented to the Greek public, and in the next few weeks, the supercomputer “Daedalus” will be put out to tender.
The Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, in a speech for at the 11th international conference entitled, New Horizons in Artificial Intelligence – organised by the Cultural Society of Entrepreneurs of Northern Greece, with the Navarino Network and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation – elaborated on these two cutting-edge reforms.
Papastergiou said the “digital assistant” will be presented on Wednesday to the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, and the following day to journalists. The minister said the new digital tool for public administration will use artificial intelligence and will provide combined answers to both simple and complex questions.
Papastergiou said, “We are trying to see how we can help a citizen who is looking for something in the public administration or on gov.gr, and either cannot find it easily or cannot express it.”
He cited as a typical example the case of a third country citizen who is under international protection and asks whether he is entitled to a residence certificate.
Papastergiou stressed that “apart from people, we also need infrastructure” and that “the news is good”. The minister referred to the Greek supercomputer “Daedalus” which he described as “one of the five largest machines in Europe.”
Daedalus will be installed at the Lavrion technology park, while its total budget is estimated to surpass 50 million euros.
“In addition to this project, through the Recovery Fund, and in cooperation with the European Investment Bank, we must not only consume but also produce so that we can give the ‘weapons’ to the academic and research community to ‘run’ various tests and ‘projects’ to continue to be at the cutting edge of technology” Papastergiou said.
He then cited data from an international study – he added that 11 per cent of the top AI programmers have graduated from Greek universities.
Modernizing the Greek public sector has been a priority for the New Democracy government, and the establishment of gov.gr that largely reflects the structure of gov.uk – has been considered a success.
In his second consecutive term, Mitsotakis promised to achieve in what concerns the modernization and the digitization of services towards Greek citizens, and the use of AI is considered fundamental in this endeavour.
