Greece is forging ahead with "technology for people, with responsible Artificial Intelligence and with measures we are taking on what is a very important issue, the addiction of minors to the internet," Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou said on Friday, while wrapping up an address at the Star Forum on the country's goals in this area.
He stressed the rapid improvements in the penetration of optic fibre connections and broadband to 52%, from 0% in 2019, thanks to the two voucher programmes introduced for this purpose, and the recent signing of a contract for the construction of the "Daedalus" supercomputer, noting that such infrastructure was necessary for the future in AI.
"Daedulus, our national supercomputer, is just such an infrastructure and is no small machine. It is a project of 45 million euros, of which 35% is financed by a European initiative and 65% from the Recovery Fund. It will be one of the top five machines in Europe and one of about 50 top machines in the world and will give our country additional capacity to run AI applications," the minister said.
He also noted that Greece is one of the first seven countries added to the EU's AI Factories action, which will bring together young scientists and start-up companies, on the one hand, and a market that is seeking solutions via AI on the other. The Greek AI Factory "Pharos" will "unite problems with solutions and all this with infrastructure," he added.
Papastergiou also spoke about the new European regulation on data governance and the recent bill harmonising Greek legislation with this, which was adopted by Parliament on Thursday, pointing out that "without data, you can't have AI".
Explaining the parameters of the new law, he said this created a new information centre, the digital governance ministry, which will undertake to have a discussion with all the other ministries if some agency requests data, advising them on whether they can or cannot provide this data, once this is approved by the Hellenic Data Protection Authority.
"Consequently, therefore, a very specific structure and process is being created in our country, also, in order to be able to use this wealth that exists," the minister said.