Greece and AI
How many Greeks use ChatGPT today?
Welcome to the 9 awesome new readers who joined us in the past two weeks!
If you haven’t subscribed, join 2,824 smart, curious people interested in Changing Greece.
A letter and a thank you
Dear everyone,
This is the 22nd and final newsletter for 2024.
If you are a loyal reader, your continued readership and comments mean so much to me. I’m grateful. If you are new here, I hope this space lives up to your expectations.
I love Greece and deeply believe in what Greeks around the world can do. We have a long way to go but have also come far together in the past years.
After a decade of planning (in my head), planting (the seeds) and discovering (the right people), I want to take this endeavor of Changing Greece to the next level.
What does that mean? You’ll have to wait until next year to find out.
If you are that curious, you can reach out for spoilers. I hinted about it one year ago.
Thank you for making this journey worthwhile.
Wishing you all a wonderful 2025.
🇬🇷🤖 Greece and AI
Did you know that at least 1 out of 3 Greeks use ChatGPT today?
That’s pretty impressive, if you ask me.
The rapid rise of AI is affecting the entire world and that includes Greece.
AI adoption is happening faster than both the computer and internet revolutions.
We’ve talked before about the Greek AI ecosystem. It is large and meaningful, with a strong scientific presence in Greece that expands far outside the country’s borders.
Greece is currently the second largest net exporter of AI talent after India.
What about all the non-tech folks whose jobs are starting to get affected by AI?
Greeks have one of the highest self-expressed fears of job loss due to AI in Europe.
But is that fear warranted?
According to the OECD, 4.7% of Greek workers are on average at high risk of automation (i.e. over 25% of their skills and abilities are highly automatable).
This figure ranges from 2.9% in Attica to 7.9% in Central Greece, and is considerably lower than the OECD average of 12%.
26.4% of Greek workers are on average exposed to Generative AI (i.e. over 20% of their job tasks could be done in half time with the help of Gen AI). That’s 1 out of 4.
This figure ranges from 13.7% in Eastern Macedonia, Thrace to 35.3% in Attica, which is the region most exposed to obsolescence due to Gen AI. The national average is very close to the OECD average of 26%.
Clearly, Greek workers will need to up-skill themselves heavily in the age of AI.
Greece has the second largest difference between AI skill gap and its current level of training after Portugal. This means the average Greek workers has a lot of work ahead.
Some sectors will be impacted (and driven) by Gen AI more than others.
According to Deloitte, 48% of the Gen AI impact in Greece’s economy will relate to the following sectors: manufacturing, wholesale trade, provision of services, information and communication, as well as financial and insurance services.
All of this is quite important, especially if we want Greece to become competitive and not fall behind against an increasingly automatable technological global landscape.
In this new AI-driven world, the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry is leading the charge.
The ICT sector in Greece has grown almost four times (4x) faster than the entirety of the Greek economy. This trend is only expected to grow over the coming years.
Greeks are becoming increasingly more AI-aware. Businesses, individuals as well as the government are all scrambling to position themselves against this new paradigm.
AI will not be a solution to all of our problems. In fact, it will create many new ones.
And yet, a lot will depend on how we manage to channel its transformative potential.
It will be interesting to see what we make of it in the coming years.
🏭 Economy & Business
Tourism hits record-breaking year with >€20.9B in revenue
Top 30 most profitable companies in the tourism sector
OECD published its 2024 economic survey for Greece
BoG released its interim report on monetary policy for the year
Piraeus shared an incredible report on Greece’s economic growth
Retail trade numbers came really strong for October
Meridiam buys into Greece’s power grid project with Cyprus, Israel
French political troubles contrasted to Greece’s continued recovery
🤖 Tech & Startups
Greek-founded startups raised $1.3B across 120+ rounds in 2024
Endeavor Greece selects 7 new startups in its Scale Up program
Athena RC released its annual activity report for last year
Panathēnea, annual innovation fête, launched by Rasmussen/Visviki
Cyber threat landscape of Greece evolved significantly in 2024
Corsmed (easier MRI scans) raised a €3.3M seed round
Tiun (online media consumption) raised a €2.5M pre-seed round
Camperoni (parental logistics) raised a pre-seed round from Genesis
EnAcuity (laparoscopic surgery) raised a £1.28M pre-seed round
🙌 Celebrating Greek wins
Greeks for Geeks team comes first at top tier HACK3D competition
George Pappas receives 2024 IEEE Control Systems Society best paper award
George Karniadakis 1st out of 21,237 for Applied Math in Top 2% Scientists List
📌 Spotlight: Persistent wage gap
The wage gap in Greece is shrinking but sadly still remains prevalent.
Mean gross annual earnings for men are still higher than women in every single occupation category, as measured by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT).
A dynamic economy will never reach a perfect equilibrium (except in theory books of armchair economists) and should never force an equality of outcome.
But the gap is large and persistent, so there is much more we should do to ensure equality of opportunity for women to get paid better and also rise through the ranks.
That’s it for this year. I always love hearing from you. Make sure to hit that reply button.
Find me on X or Bluesky for bite-sized opinions.
Happy New Year!
I'd like to learn a bit more about your Changing Greece endeavour. I have been personally trying to find ways to make myself useful to Greece in some capacity (as an expat), however I've yet to sit down and properly plan things out. If there's anything I can do to help in this, or your audience in general, please do let us know.