Based on the contract, the China-made buses will operate without passengers for 18 hours every day until they complete 5,000 km under daily traffic conditions. Infrastructure and Transport Minister Christos Staikouras boarded one of the buses on Syngrou Avenue for part of the first scheduled run in Athens. He was joined by Deputy Minister Nikos Tachiaos and OSY CEO Stefanos Agiasoglou. An OSY statement said one of the new buses caught the attention of grade school students who happened to be near a bus stop and boarded it. "The children's enthusiasm for the brand-new electric vehicle provides the greatest satisfaction about the implementation of the government's announcement related to upgrading the company's bus fleet," OSY noted. The 140 buses were delivered by manufacturer Yutong in Attica on March 4th, while another 110 were delivered in Thessaloniki on March 1st.

The number of Greeks who has "acquired" a digital wallet - since its launch on July 2022 - is estimated at 1,877,032. An important "guide" for any questions regarding the new way of entering the stadiums with the Gov.gr.Wallet ticket is available on the platform https://tickets.gov.gr. "It is a simple process, but an important prerequisite, to use all those tools that make our daily life even friendlier, easier and certainly without bureaucracy," Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou said.

The “4th Women In Digital Forum”, the conference made “institution” for Women in Tech, STEM and Digital is coming on March 7th, 2024 in the form of a different and inspiring event, combining dialogue about the present and the future, with a glittering celebration of what has been achieved to date. In a world driven by Technology, the “4th Women In Digital Forum”, will seek to amplify voices, reduce differences and shape the appropriate dialogue framework for the rightful place of women in business, public sphere, and society. Riper, stronger and richer, the 4th Women In Digital Forum will highlight every point of view and proposal to break down barriers, in a quest for an inclusive community, where every woman can thrive and make a meaningful impact. Through critical discussions, engaging panels, workshops and networking opportunities, Smart Press aims to create a supportive ecosystem that propels women forward in their digital careers. Join as we explore the limitless possibilities in the digital world and showcase the diverse talents and perspectives women bring to the table. Participants include Hellenic Labor Minister Domna Michailidou.  Visit womenindigital.gr for more details and registration.  

Awaiting the accounting data, according to the first estimates, the Greek participation, with a national stand, was one of the most successful in recent years with a very large number of visitors expressing their interest in the upgraded presence of our country. The country's 11th consecutive participation in the top exhibition in Barcelona was also characterized by the high-ranking presence of government officials, local authorities, chambers of commerce and organizations. In particular, the opening of the Greek pavilion was attended by, among others, Dimitris Papastergiou, Minister of Digital Governance, Konstantinos Kyranakis, Deputy Minister of Digital Governance, the Regional Governor of Attica, Nikos Hardalias, Georgios Pitsilis, AADE Governor, and the Secretary General of Telecommunications and Posts, Konstantinos Karantzalos. Also, Marina Efraimoglou, president of EBEA, Tassos Tzikas, president of TEF - HELEXPO SA and the president of SEKEE Manos Makromallis, Ms. A common point of their interventions to the domestic and international audience was the progress that has been made in recent years in the digital transformation of the country with the central goal of serving citizens and businesses. As they emphasized, the effort will continue with greater intensity in cooperation with the innovative Greek business. But at the center of Greek participation this year was the great progress our country has made in its digital transformation in the Public Sector. It is typical that in the framework of the MWC at the stand of the global telecommunications and technology giant Telekon, a discussion was organized on the example of digital transformation of the public sector in Greece with the participation of the Deputy Minister of Digital Governance Constantinos Kyranakis, Dominique Leroy, member of the Board of Directors of Telekom, responsible for Europe and Grigoris Christopoulos, Chief Commercial Officer Business Segment of OTE Group. Ms. Leroy spoke about the impressive progress of the country, which is an example in Europe and made a special reference to the services of gov.gr, but also to the digital assistant mAIgov, which is based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Deputy Minister made a special reference to the further strengthening of the country's image to the international community, noting that achievements in the field of digital transition, such as the initiatives of IDIKA in Health, were shown at the Telekom booth, which is visited by thousands of professionals and executives from all over the world . He also stated that another important step will be taken to further reduce the time it takes to register properties in the Land Registry, announcing the use of Artificial Intelligence for the legal control of contracts. The national participation was co-organized by the Hellenic Investment and Foreign Trade Company (Enterprise Greece), in collaboration with the Association of Innovative Applications Enterprises of Greece (SEKEE) and the Ministry of Digital Governance. The national mission had the support and active participation of entities such as the Region of Attica and the Regional Development Fund, Eurobank and EGG, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center "ARCHIMEDES", the National Register of Young Businesses "Elevate Greece", the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EBEA) and the Athens Business Incubator (THEA), HELEXPO BEYOND , NBG Seeds of the National Bank, EKEFE Dimokritos, the European Innovation Hub for Digital Governance GR digiGOV-innoHUB, as well as the investment fund Phaistos 5G Ventures. The Greek companies that participated in the MWC had the opportunity to explore the possibilities of concluding agreements and partnerships, while the results were also in the field of networking. Intrakom Telekom, Adaptit and Pandas also participated in the MWC with a stand for the 17th year in a row. Artificial Intelligence in focus More generally, at this year's MCW exhibition, Artificial Intelligence was at the center of the presence of the total of almost 2,500 exhibitors from every sector of the economy, Health, Tourism, Telecommunications, Culture, Entertainment, etc. International technological giants and not only, such as among others, Huawei with the largest exhibition stand, equivalent to an entire exhibition space of an ordinary exhibition, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor, Ericsson, Cisco, Lenovo, EY, presented all the technological solutions that create the new intelligent interconnected world that is born with a focus on Artificial Intelligence. At the center of the new interconnected smart world, smart phones were once again at the center of the new interconnected smart world, with mobile phone subscribers exceeding 5.5 billion. internationally. With the new technologies that are now integrated, smart mobile phones are evolving into the digital assistant of each user, who can use the device to handle an impressive amount of daily tasks and transactions.

 Agapidaki spoke at the presentation of the National Bioethics and Technoethics Committee's opinion on "Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Health in Greece." As she stated, artificial intelligence can be utilized for diagnosis/early prognosis, therapeutic choices, overall assessment of the needs for each patient separately, dragging along the entire organization of healthcare systems. Agapidaki estimated that in the future, artificial intelligence will play an even more crucial role in the production of new drugs.

According to a press release, Sophia participated in a technology and information event organized by companies from Greece and Cyprus. From the event stage, she announced that she will be back in Greece in March, visiting Rhodes and Nafpaktos.  Sophia speaks 20 languages, including Greek flawlessly, and will participate in the first 'Greek Festival' taking place in Rhodes.  This cultural celebration showcases the history, traditions, flavors, and customs of the Dodecanese Islands, with the participation of embassies, academics, scientists, and entrepreneurs. At the Rodos Palace on March 8, Sophia will preside over the closing ceremony and the Greek Entrepreneurship Conference. On March 10, she will be present at the Meet Sophia Conference in the Holy Monastery Metamorfossi tou Sotiros (Transfiguration of Christ) in Skala Nafpaktias, north of Nafpaktos proper, facing the Corinthian Gulf. There, she will engage with representatives from various faiths, addressing questions on artificial intelligence and ethics. Among the issues examined will be the protection of privacy and the safeguarding of justice and of human values.  Sophia is a social humanoid robot developed by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, and is represented in Greece by Victorious Network. She was activated on February 14, 2016 and made her first public appearance in mid-March 2016. She has met with state leaders and widely recognized individuals, and has given interviews at the greatest television networks of the globe.

This happened n accordance with the JHellenic oint Ministerlial Decision signed by Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou, Deputy Minister of Economy and Finance Thanos Petralias and Deputy Health Minister Marios Themistokleous. The measure aims to reduce the waiting times of patients on the waiting list for operations in state hospitals.

More specifically, a total of 63,000 questions were submitted to the "Digital Assistant" of gov.gr in the first 3 days of operation. This is the first and decisive step of the government in becoming a pioneer country in the application of Artificial Intelligence in the European Union and the first country, which introduces productive Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI) in the State, to serve and facilitate the citizens. "How can I get an ID?", "How can I issue a family certificate?", "My son was born in 2010, is he entitled to a youth pass"? are some of the questions that the first "Digital Assistant" is asked to answer. Citizens can chat with the "Digital Assistant" from their mobile phone or their computer. They submit their question, written or spoken, so that the "Digital Assistant" helps them locate the service they are looking for in a simple and friendly way, while at the end of the "conversation" they have the possibility to evaluate the application. mAigov Beta provides - at the moment - the ability to serve up to 240 conversations in Greek per minute. Each citizen's interaction time with the system does not exceed 5 minutes per session. Citizens now have access to a digital assistant service that was launched on Tuesday, December 124th, 2023, allowing them to search for information on almost any type of transaction with the State, through a voice or written command. This new application is based on artificial intelligence and is available through the gov.gr platform. The digital assistant mAigov, presented by the Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou to Hellenic Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and then to journalists, offers fast and easy access to more than 1,600 digital services of the government.  Up to that Monday, searches were carried out on gov.gr based on predefined keywords. From now on, citizens will be able to type or dictate their request, with the digital assistant responding appropriately. For example, to the request “I would like you to proceed with the issuance of a marital status certificate,” the citizen receives the following response: “I’m sorry, but as a digital assistant I am not able to issue certificates. You can procure a certificate of marital status from your regular family registration, using your personal Taxisnet passwords. If it is not possible to issue it immediately online, you can issue it in a second year through KEP or the municipality where you belong,” with the application referring to the appropriate online link of gov.gr for the family status certificate. An important innovation of the application includes the possibility to search for one of the 3,270 administrative procedures of the National Register of Administrative Procedures, dubbed “Mitos.” The latter describes precisely the steps, the costs, the number of supporting documents and the period of time the state needs to complete a series of administrative procedures. For example, to the question “how do I establish a dance school?”, the citizen receives the following answer: “To establish an amateur dance school by a legal entity under private law, you must set up a business, have Taxisnet codes, appoint a representative and director of studies, and have fulfilled your military obligations. You will need various supporting documents, such as a copy of the articles of association, the architectural plan, a building permit, etc.”

This new section provides reliable explainers and science-based answers to the most frequently asked questions about electromobility, such as the performance of an electric car, the safety of electric vehicles and energy management during a road trip. In the same section on the website (https://www.yme.gr/), information is also available on the ministry's current ongoing four programs: Move Electric, Green Taxis, e-Astypalea and Charge Anywhere.

The prospects of the Greek economy, the potential of Greek start-ups, the advantages offered by the country and innovation support policies, the exploitation of artificial intelligence and the role that Greece can play in the sector dominated the discussion. Referring to the prospects of the Greek economy and asked about the choice of the "Economist" magazine to rank Greece in the first place in terms of performance for 2023, the prime minister noted: I believe it is an important confirmation of the important work we have done in terms of transforming the Greek economy and placing it on a sustainable development path, while at the same time ensuring that we manage public finances in a responsible manner.  I believe that the startup ecosystem and the investments we have made in new technologies contribute significantly to changing the production model of the Greek economy. We know that exiting a vicious circle and entering a virtuous circle is a good thing. But there is no room for complacency. We still have a long way to go. There is always a tendency to forget the huge price we had to pay because of the crisis, when we lost 1/4 of our GDP. We know we have to move fast and seize opportunities.  But I believe we will continue to have growth rates that are significantly higher than the rest of the Eurozone. We will continue to reduce our debt as a percentage of GDP. We know that we have to continue a tight fiscal policy because the era of loose fiscal policy is over, so we know that we have to run primary surpluses. However, I believe we have proven that one can achieve economic growth, reduce taxes and maintain fiscal discipline at the same time. Many believed that this was not possible.  

The draft rule on child sexual abuse material (CSAM), proposed by the European Commission last year, has been a bone of contention between advocates of online safety measures and privacy activists worried about surveillance. The European Union executive came up with the CSAM proposal after the current system of voluntary detection and reporting by companies proved to be insufficient to protect children. EU lawmakers have to thrash out the final details with member states before the draft can become legislation in a process that may be finalised next year. The proposed legislation forces messaging services, app stores and internet access providers to report and remove known and new images and videos, as well as cases of grooming. An EU Center on Child Sexual Abuse will be set up to act as a hub of expertise and to forward reports to the police. To avoid mass surveillance, EU lawmakers beefed up detection orders to allow judicial authorities to authorise time-limited orders to find and delete CSAM. These can only be issued if there is reasonable grounds of suspicion of child sexual abuse. Companies would also be able to choose the technology used to detect such offences, as long as this is subject to an independent, public audit. The decision by lawmakers to exempt end-to-end encryption from the draft rules drew praise from privacy activists. “The European Parliament’s position removes indiscriminate chat control and allows only for targeted surveillance of specific individuals and groups reasonably suspicious of being linked to child sexual abuse material with a judicial warrant,” The European Liberal Youth (LYMEC) said. 

The conference also dealt thoroughly with the risks of applying artificial intelligence (AI) in labor relations in the media, and was broadcast live by the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA). Galamatis referred to a "monumental moment in human history, as AI has led to incredible developments." At this time, he added, "We must approach the regulation of AI with foresight, integrity and a firm commitment to the well-being of humanity. A well-designed regulatory framework can ensure that AI acts as a force for good, propelling us toward a future where innovation thrives in harmony always with ethical considerations."  SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance Eurodeputy Kostas Arvanitis stressed that "the controversial issue is how many people will be left, and what will be the role they will play. If we judge by how the spread of digital technology and the Internet has eliminated so many jobs in the media, AI can go one step further, to signal a job obliteration in the media sector." Arvanitis made three proposals: breaking up the concentration of media control by large publishing groups; the radical redefinition of rules in the media landscape, including ethics, work and personal safety of all press employees, editorial independence, and establishment of effective and deterrent community mechanisms in cases of misinformation. He added also the continuous boosting of transparency in systems, cybersecurity systems/data and actions of civil society systems and cybersecurity systems strengthening of the transparency of cybersecurity systems and data and of the action of civil society, leading to building a social counter-intelligence against the wave of misinformation and the  deceitful fragmentation of information.  ANA-MPA President and General Director Aimilios Perdikaris stressed that "the great fear is the creation of a new work environment". As he explained, "The reality we cannot deny at this moment is that there are truly cases where AI is doing our job, but no humans have been substituted." He stressed that "we have to face with courage and preparedness the reality that many of us want to move on to education, training, learning, and even change of specialty, for some; (...) That is why we must open the discussion immediately, because if our field is to change, it would be good that it changed with us, not without us." In this effort, he announced that ANA-MPA will go ahead with the creation of a series of videos and other interventions that will explain in simple terms to society what AI is, "mainly to defeat fears and turn them into a driving force, so that we can use technology and AI for the benefit of society itself and not turn it against us." Referring to whether AI will affect jobs in the media, Internet Publishers Association (ENED) Vice-President Dimitris Iliopoulos asserted that this would be 'impossible' to happen: "AI, no matter how smart we think it is, has structural limitations, compared to humans. The most basic one is that it cannot create. It can synthesize, but it cannot create [new content] on its own, and therefore it has no judgment like a human does, and cannot evolve."  In the same vein, the director general of the Association of Private Nationwide Television Stations (EITESEE) Konstantinos Kibouropoulos responded to the question of AI's effect on media that "the human factor should always put up an appropriate resistance. There is no other way." However, he raised concerns about "how uncontrollable the accumulation of the power of knowledge can become, but also how the achievements of a civilisation that has humanity as its central focus will not be threatened."  Ionian University ssistant professor Valia Kaimaki stressed among other issues that "the problem is not the machines, but the fact that the development of AI comes at a time that is already very stressful for the journalistic world, where no one wants reliable journalism: governments because it bothers them, and publishers because it is expensive. At the same time, we don't have an audience supporting us, because we have been experiencing a huge crisis of credibility for at least two decades if not longer."  President of the Association of Journalists of Periodical and Electronic Media (ESPT) Themis Beredimas noted that "technology has been changing journalism and labor relations for decades, and it is certain that new applications of AI will again bring massive new changes and challenges, and no one can at this stage predict with certainty whether the balance of AI implementation will be negative or positive for employees." He added that opportunities will emerge to increase the productivity of workers and businesses, create new tasks and occupations, and improve the quality of work. That however will bring new challenges to be regulated in terms of quality of work and the role of people at work. "The world of work must prepare itself by investing in adaptation to the new data and the new conditions that will emerge," he stressed.  Vassilis Vassilopoulos, a PhD in media governance, noted among other things that "there is a significant issue in terms of who holds responsibility, and when you use information systems there is the General Data Protection Regulation. AI should be regulated in the same way that information system engagement is regulated, when AI is used in journalism."  Concluding, journalist Nikos Eleftheroglou commented that "in every transition, futurists put out eulogies about the death of the media sector. Reality has proven them wrong, and I hope that in this case it will prove them wrong again."