In a Metron Analysis survey conducted in October 2025, 47% of respondents said they use artificial intelligence applications. By January 2026, the first diaNEOsis study on AI puts this number at 65%, an astonishing 18 percentage point increase.
In the latest diaNEOsis study conducted in May 2026, this number was even higher at 69%.
A new survey found that six in 10 Greeks report using such tools several times a week, and nearly one in four say they use AI daily. Education, including higher education, is one of the key areas where these applications are gaining ground. According to a UNESCO study, two-thirds of higher education institutions have already adopted or are developing policies governing the use of AI. The survey collected 400 responses from the UNESCO network in 90 countries, and nine out of ten participants reported using AI tools primarily for professional activities such as research and writing.
Students at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) recently said that they use AI applications every day in their classes. One of them remarked, “I can’t survive this school without AI,” raising legitimate questions about how students in comparable programs would have managed their academic workload just five years ago.
Michalis, 22, an undergraduate student at NTUA, said, “I haven’t gone a single day without using AI to do my school work, and that’s been the case this past year.” I first encountered these tools in 2024. It’s saved me an incredible amount of time and allowed me to keep up with the rigors of the program, from research and understanding concepts and theory to writing code and analyzing data. I can’t imagine going through five years without AI, but I feel like I’ve lost some weight.”
Similar images emerged from Despoina, a psychology graduate student, and Michalis, a speech therapy graduate. “I used it for my paper and it saved me a ton of time finding sources more focused on my topic. The translation help was invaluable. The AI can translate multi-page papers in seconds with precise terminology. I couldn’t have done without it and would definitely use it again for the same reasons.”
Panos Zielias, an economics doctoral student at Princeton University, adds an important dimension to the need to critically evaluate what AI produces: “Adds an important dimension to the need to critically assess what AI produces: I think it’s necessary, because it allows us to test and explore many working hypotheses more quickly, identify dead ends more quickly, and advance our research more effectively.However, because AI provides us with a huge number of results and possibilities in terms of research methods, we need to be more cautious and not simply trust everything it has to offer.
Professors’ opinions
Antonis Kalogeropoulos, associate professor of political communication at the Vrije Universiteit Bruxelles, said that AI has led many of his colleagues to revert to older forms of student assessment.
Overall attitudes toward AI are positive, but there is a clear need for frameworks and guidelines. “Nothing in life is strictly necessary. If you want to walk up to the sixth floor, you can walk up, but now there’s a new elevator,” said Dimostenis Kolias, an economist at the GSEE Labor Research Institute who studies the use of AI in professional fields. If you learn how to use it, you will help yourself. In Greece, the adoption rate of AI in companies is the lowest in the EU, ranking fourth from the bottom. That can and should change. There are reasons for that.” However, eight in 10 young people use it, the highest rate in Europe. This is one of Greece’s lovely paradoxes. ”
