By his decision Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is composed High Level Advisory Committee on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The exponential rate of development of Artificial Intelligence makes it necessary to set up an Advisory Committee under the Prime Minister, with the main objective of preparing the country for the developments that all kinds of applications of said technology will bring, in the direction of participatory resilience, competitiveness, sustainable development and prosperity.

THE Committee will provide evidence-based advice and suggestions on how Greece can take advantage of the multiple possibilities and opportunities arising from the use of IT, but also how it can implement a coherent protection framework against the possible challenges and adjustments, inequalities and risks that lurk.

More specifically, the Commission will formulate policy recommendations and outline guidelines for the long-term formulation of a national IT strategy, focusing on the areas of importance for Greece: in the economy and society, improving productivity, increasing innovation, strengthening infrastructure, managing the effects of the climate crisis, supporting human resources and social cohesion, creating quality jobs, defending national digital sovereignty and improving the operation of the State.

In addition, the Commission will aim to identify areas where Greece has a competitive advantage and can be at the forefront of the international dialogue on the use of IT and suggest ways to creatively combine the application of ethical and regulatory rules with the promotion of innovation, from the public and from the private sector and will contribute national positions to the European debate on the IT regulatory framework. Finally, it will document the dynamic trends and explore the future prospects of the technology in question.

The operation of the Committee is unpaid. Also, the support of the Commission’s work is undertaken free of charge by the service provider Accenture, which has a high level of digital services and expertise in IT.

The members of the Committee are:

Constantinos Daskalakis Professor of Computer Science at MIT, who also heads the Committee.

Dracopoulos Kimonas Assistant Professor of Data and Operations Science at the University of Southern California

Karkaletsis Evangelos Director of Research at the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications of EKEFE “Demokritos”

Kinti Vasiliki (Vasso) Professor of Philosophy of Science and Analytical Philosophy at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of EKPA

George Pagoulatos Permanent Representative of Greece to the OECD

Panagopoulou Fereniki Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, Data Protection Law and Bioethics at Panteion University and Director of the European Laboratory of Bioethics, Technoethics and Law at Panteion University

Pietas Ioannis Professor of the Department of Informatics at AUTH and President of the International Academy of Doctoral Studies in Artificial Intelligence

Sellis Timoleon (Timos) Director of the “Archimedes” Research Unit of the “Athena” Research Center

Andreas Stavropoulos Vice President of Endeavor Greece – Partner at Threshold (former DFJ) Ventures – Board Member of TAIPED

Tassiolas Ioannis (John) Professor of Moral and Legal Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Oxford

Tsekeris Charalambos Vice President of the National Bioethics & Technoethics Committee.

“As I mentioned in the program statements, the government will actively deal with the big challenges related to Artificial Intelligence and they are already present. They are not about the future but the present. State and citizens, we must organize its reception before artificial intelligence becomes a daily reality in our absence. For this purpose we are proceeding today with the establishment of an advisory committee on Artificial Intelligence in my office, with the participation of distinguished scientists from different fields of dealing with Artificial Intelligence. Greece has competent researchers in all fields of research related to the development of the greatest technological revolution in the history of mankind and can participate equally in the international dialogue” said the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for the establishment of the Commission.

For his part, the head of the Commission Mr. Daskalakis said about the Commission and its work: “I accepted the honorable offer of Prime Minister Mr. Mitsotakis to head the Advisory Committee on Artificial Intelligence and to work with an excellent group of distinguished scientists who make up the Committee.

Our task will be to formulate policy proposals that will highlight the benefits of Artificial Intelligence for Society, Economy, Science and Man, while identifying challenges and addressing potential risks.

We will also work in concert so that Greece becomes a member of the international initiatives for Artificial Intelligence that are developed in the framework of the International Organizations that our country participates in and becomes a participant in the global dialogue on the evolution of Artificial Intelligence.

The presence of high-level Greek researchers and scientists inside and outside Greece constitutes an important legacy that will help us in the interesting work ahead of us.”

Who is Konstantinos Daskalakis?

Konstantinos Periklis Daskalakis is professor of Computer Science at MIT. His research focuses on theoretical informatics and its interface with Economics, Statistics, Probability Theory, and Artificial Intelligence.

Konstantinos Daskalakis is Cretan by origin, but grew up in Athens where he graduated from Varvakeio Experimental High School in 1999. In 2004 he graduated from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens with a grade of 9.98/10. In the summer of 2004 he went to California, USA. with a scholarship from the University of Berkeley to pursue doctoral studies in Computer Science under the supervision of the distinguished computer scientist Professor Christos Papadimitriou. After the end of his studies, in the year 2008-2009, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the laboratories of Microsoft, of which he was a scholarship holder already during his doctoral studies. In the spring of 2008 he had professorship offers from many universities in the world, while since the summer of 2008 he has been a professor at the leading MIT.

His 2006 paper with professors Paul Goldberg and Christos Papadimitriou, on “The Computational Complexity of the Nash Equilibrium,” answered a scientific question that had been unsolved for over 50 years, since John Nash’s 1950 publication of for which Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. The work of Constantinos Daskalakis identifies computational obstacles to the applicability of the Nash equilibrium, which has been the focus of economic mathematics, and shows the need for new, more realistic notions of equilibrium. For their work, Daskalakis-Goldberg-Papadimitriou were awarded the Kalai prize in the summer of 2008 by the Game Theory Society, and in the summer of 2011 by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. with the Outstanding Research Award.
More recently, Constantinos Daskalakis’ research has focused on the study of the mathematical foundations of auctions, where he generalized to multiple objects the also Nobel Prize-winning auction of Roger Myerson, while now his research focuses on Statistics in many dimensions, and artificial intelligence.

Konstantinos Daskalakis was honored in 2018 with the top Nevanlina prize from the International Mathematical Union. This prize is awarded together with the Fields Prize, for outstanding contributions to the mathematical aspects of the information sciences. In 2008 he was also awarded the top prize for the best PhD thesis in computing by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), while in June 2019 he was honored as the Young Scientist of the Year by the same organization with the Grace Murray Hopper Award .

He has received many others honors. For example, in 2010 he was honored by the National Science Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. In 2011 he was awarded the Ruth and Joel Spira Award for Outstanding Teaching by MIT. In 2012 he was awarded the Microsoft Research Fellowship, in 2017 the Google Research Award, and in 2018 the Simons Foundation Award. Finally, in 2013 he was awarded the best publication award at the ACM Conference on Economics and Computation.