On Thursday, September 20th, we met with a large number of people from fields such as Technology, Informatics, Journalism, etc., for another academic year at INNOVATHENS, starting the new cycle of SciFY Academy seminars. For the months of September and October, SciFY Academy deals with Artificial Intelligence and Data as tools and how they are used 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 1st part of the series in September, the 24th SciFY Academy was on “AI & Data in Journalism”. Focusing on Journalism, we learned how a journalist can research better and faster 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.

Then Dr. Georgios Petasis, researcher at NCSR Demokritos and CEO of Intellitech IKE, presented us with applied examples (YourDataStories Project) so that we can visualize and analyze open government data to understand them and exploit them 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 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 world-wide so that the impact is multiplied.

You can find the event’s presentations 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 diffusion of knowledge!