AmCham Cyprus successfully hosted a Breakfast Series event featuring the Chief Scientist for Research, Innovation and Technology of the Republic of Cyprus and Chairman of the National AI Taskforce, Mr. Demetris Skourides who delivered a presentation titled: «Cyprus as a Bridge between Continents in the Age of AI». The key points of the presented included:
📈 Cyprus Performance at a Glance: Mr. Skourides highlighted Cyprus’s impressive rankings in various innovation and economic indices., being ranked 10th in the European Innovation Scoreboard, 4th in Emerging Europe, and 11th globally in the Greenfield FDI Performance Index 2023. Additionally, Cyprus has seen a 78% increase in startups since 2024 and is ranked 2nd globally in gaming.
🚀 Innovate Across Industries: He also emphasized the importance of innovation across different industries in Cyprus and presented the Gartner Emerging Technologies Hype Curve, which illustrates the adoption and maturity of various emerging technologies.
🤖 AI Tech Adoption: The Chief Scientist analysed the adoption of AI technologies and research efforts in Europe, highlighting Cyprus’s role in this landscape and compared the adoption and impact of generative AI technologies.
🔄 From Hype to Adoption: Mr. Skourides explored the journey from the hype around AI to its actual adoption in various departments and ministries, illustrating the value and number of use cases. He also provided new information on new AI-based companies arriving in Cyprus and the interest shown by startups from various countries such as the USA, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Israel, and the UAE.
🔮 Futureproofing Cyprus: He also highlighted the key policies for futureproofing Cyprus, such as adopting cloud technologies to enhance efficiency, scalability, and accessibility of services, prioritizing mobile technologies to ensure that services and applications are optimized for mobile devices, catering to the increasing number of mobile users and integrating artificial intelligence into various sectors to drive innovation, improve decision-making, and enhance overall performance
🧠 National AI Task Force: Lastly, the Chief Scientist detailed the workstreams of the National AI Task Force, designed to position Cyprus as a forward-thinking and technologically advanced nation, ready to embrace the challenges and opportunities of the future, with the focus being on areas such as AI research, workforce development, infrastructure, and identifying high-potential wins linked to the Cyprus economy. He elaborated furthermore on the types of infrastructure required for Ai, Data, compute to enable what he envisions by 2035 personalized citizen and company journeys.
To get there Mr Skourides said that we require sovereign capability, acceleration in the build of skills, and cost effective highly resilient infrastructure that will act as both digital accelerators helping the government’s digitization journey as well as that of private industry.
A dynamic Q&A session followed, where attendees engaged in a robust discussion on several key issues. Participants highlighted the importance of fostering a culture of innovation across different industries, emphasising the need for continuous investment in research and development. They also discussed the challenges and opportunities associated with integrating AI into existing systems and the importance of developing a skilled workforce to support this transition.
Participants examined the policies and strategies needed to ensure that the country remains competitive in the global market, complying with the EU AI Act and they also discussed the workstreams of the National AI Task Force, focusing on areas such as AI research, workforce development, infrastructure, and identifying high-potential wins linked to the Cyprus economy.
The conversation concluded with a forward-looking perspective on the potential of AI to drive economic growth and improve public services, with attendees agreeing on the importance of collaboration between the public and private sectors to harness the full potential of AI and ensure that its benefits are widely shared.
