Artificial Intelligence is gradually becoming a key factor in Greece’s defense planning, formulating the architecture of international security, National Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said on Thursday in opening statements at the international conference of crisis management ‘Athena-25’.

The conference theme is “Armed conflicts and crisis management in the era of artificial intelligence” and it is organized under the aegis of the ministry by the Hellenic National Defense General Staff in collaboration with the General Directorate of Civil National Defense and International Relations. 

Minister Dendias urged all interested agencies to “become involved in a constructive dialog on AI, focused on the future” both to face AI challenges and to take advantage of its opportunities. The conference, he said, provided “the convergence of AI with the management of crises and the development of operations on the field.”

The minister also referred to the current applications and benefits of AI in the military, mentioning among others speedier decision-making, greater accuracy in target-focusing, prioritizing threats, getting real-time updates from the field, supporting logistics, boosting human resources in complex conditions and processing effectively large volumes of data quickly.

“We cannot ignore the fact that technological progress is combined with a series of complicated and multifaceted legal, ethical, technological and political challenges that also require deep analysis and a deep evaluation,” the minister cautioned.

As he said, “AI is not called upon to substitute for or replace the human factor, it is called upon to enforce it and facilitate it. Therefore we cannot ignore the increasing threat of fully automating life-and-death decisions.”

The event was held at the Hellenic Army Academy’s amphitheater and attended by top military and security officers, ambassadors, academics and military staff.