During the panel discussion, ‘AI at Scale: Transforming Europe’s Economy’, at the Digital Conference ‘Shaping the Next Digital Frontier’ held in Nicosia, panelists shared the opinion that Europe needs a cultural shift to start thinking on how AI can start creating real value.
The panel was moderated by George Malekkos, President of the Cyprus Information Technology Enterprises Association, who discussed, the issue with Daniel Gueorguiev, Head of Institutional Affairs of Domyn, Yanna Andronopoulou, BOD Member & General Manager of Microsoft, Greece, Cyprus and Malta, and Gerasimos Ntouskas, Partner, Technology Consulting at KPMG Cyprus.
During her comments, Andronopoulou said that when adopting AI, businesses or countries need to think about what the core segments of the economy are where it can be applied. She added that countries also need to think about digital readiness and their people, who are the third pillar.
“People need to be skilled from the government and the whole ecosystem to adopt AI,” Andronopoulou said.
Commenting on scaling AI, Gueorguiev said: “It doesn’t get more complex than Europe.”
Meanwhile, Ntouskas said that Europe needs to start thinking about how AI can start creating values and what business impact it can have. “We need to find the right use cases for AI,” he said.
Discussing the return seen in the economy by AI, Ntouskas pointed out that scalability is not happening at the rate that is expected, as it is difficult to move from the point of contact to the market.
“We need to play a different game in Europe,” Gueorguiev said. He said that with the Americans and Chinese as competitors, Europe needs to find a new niche and that the continent has “phenomenal potential” mobilising companies to endorse their AI and own their AI.
“We need to have AI that is trustworthy and transparent,” he said.
Andronopoulou also agreed and said, “We need to change the culture and be more able to experiment.”
She added that this cultural shift is necessary and the only way to address the fear of scaling and adopting AI in Europe.
