Journalists and content creators had the opportunity to test the NEUROCLIMA tools for the first time in June 10th. The hands-on webinar, the first installation of the Future of Our Food series, was co-organised by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and Re-Imagine Europa (RIE), and brought together professionals from across Europe to test the Neuroclima Hub’s AI-powered tools Lens and Bot.
After a demo of the tools by CEPS researcher Berta Mizsei that included detailed information about the platform’s data sources, participants were tasked with investigating a critical question: “Is climate change impacting food security in Europe?”. The interactive session, facilitated by RIE’s journalist Lydia Aguirre, asked participants to test two different workflows:
- Evidence Gathering with Lens: Journalists explored a centralised repository containing scientific research papers, policy and regulation documents, and news articles. They also examined Social Tipping Points (STPs) to identify novel story angles, such as supply chain vulnerabilities and food resilience.
- Editorial Pitching with Bot: Using the Bot as an interactive research assistant, testers brainstormed angles and quickly structured a persuasive, evidence-based story pitch for an editor.
Key Takeaways
Feedback from the workshop highlighted how the Neuroclima Hub addresses the core challenges of modern journalism:
- Uncompromising Accuracy: Unlike traditional AI assistants, both Lens and Bot retrieve direct passages from original reports rather than generating summaries. Journalists noted this built high trust and confidence in the source material.
- Seamless Workflow: Testers praised the efficiency of having scientific, regulatory, and news sources integrated in a single workspace. They naturally moved between Bot for brainstorming keywords and Lens for deep-dive investigation.
The rich feedback delivered by participants also included some bugs that will help the NEUROCLIMA technical team improve and refine the tools before the platform’s wide release. We would like to thank the participants for their time and effort.
The next step in piloting NEUROCLIMA’S tools in Belgium will be a Future of Our Food foresight workshop for EU policymakers at CEPS. The September 8th session will ask what the EU’s food strategy should be across variou future scenarios. If you are interested in participating, please contact berta.mizsei@ceps.eu.
