Humans of AI | Harry Verwayen (Europeana) - Connecting Culture Across Borders

🔍 In this episode, Harry Verwayen from Europeana reflects on how Europe’s cultural heritage sector is responding to the rise of AI while staying rooted in the idea that culture belongs to everyone. He shares the origins of Europeana as a public alternative to private digitization efforts and explains how AI is being used to improve access to millions of cultural objects, guided by long-standing values like openness, authenticity, and provenance.

Harry argues that the real challenge is not technology but adoption, governance, and public trust. As chatbots increasingly replace search engines as the main interface to knowledge, he warns that without sustained public investment and engagement, Europe’s cultural diversity risks becoming invisible in an AI-driven future.

📌 HoAI Highlights

⏲️[00:00] Intro

⏲️[00:48] The Spark

⏲️[02:47] The Impact

⏲️[09:41] The Challenge

⏲️[14:56] The Future

⏲️[20:10] The Takeaway

The Spark

🗣️“Culture heritage belongs to all of us. Why would exclusive access to that only happen through a private entity?”

The Impact

🗣️ “The data really is like a garden, you need to keep nurturing it, because what is a derogative term today may change in the future.”

The Challenge

🗣️ “I don’t think it’s a technological challenge.Tthe technology is there. The question is how do we implement that more widely.”

The Future

🗣️“Library and archival data are the original datasets, and with them comes a value system of authenticity and provenance that AI should inherit.”

The Takeaway

🗣️ “AI chatbot interfaces will be how people interface with knowledge—and if we don’t engage with them, our culture risks becoming invisible."

📌 About Our Guests

Harry Verwayen | Europeana

🌐 linkedin.com/in/harryverwayen

🌐 https://www.europeana.eu/en

Europeana is a digital platform that provides access to millions of cultural heritage items from museums, galleries, libraries, and archives across Europe. It promotes the sharing and reuse of Europe’s cultural collections for education, research, and creativity.

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