On Thursday, September 20th, a large number of people from fields such as Technology, Informatics, and journalism came together for the start of another academic year at INNOVATHENS, marking the beginning of the new cycle of SciFY Academy seminars. For September and October, SciFY Academy explores Artificial Intelligence and Data as tools and their applications in various scientific fields. Specifically, we refer to the role and applications of new technologies and Artificial Intelligence in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

In the first part of the series in September, the 24th SciFY Academy focused on “AI & Data in Journalism”. Focusing on Journalism, we learned how a journalist can research more effectively and efficiently by leveraging open data with the help of Artificial Intelligence tools.

First, Dr. Michalis Vafopoulos, from NCSR “Demokritos”, told us about the Google DNI OpJ project, which aims to enhance the reuse of open financial data by facilitating search and access to the data’s original source. See his presentation here.

Then, Dr. Georgios Petasis, a researcher at NCSR “Demokritos” and CEO of Intellitech IKE, presented us with applied examples (YourDataStories Project) that enable us to visualize and analyze open government data, thereby understanding and exploiting it for transparency and anti-corruption purposes.

Finally, Dr. George Giannakopoulos, CTO of the NGO SciFY and researcher at NCSR “Demokritos”, explained to us how an application (NewSum) can be a solution for extracting summaries from many sources and thousands of news articles in a way that allows quick and efficient updating, always with reference to sources, while maintaining verifiability. The fact that this particular application, NewSum, works regardless of language empowers journalists and citizens worldwide, thereby multiplying its impact. See his presentation here.

A big thank you to INNOVATHENS as well as to all of you who once again contributed to the realization of our vision for the free dissemination of knowledge.