Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis traveled to San Francisco on Monday night to promote Greece, but he also did something heads of state on a trade mission don’t usually do. In front of about 250 founders, investors, and executives, he openly said he doesn’t have answers to many of the questions about AI that leaders around the world are privately discussing.
Speaking to this editor at an event hosted by Endeavor Greece, the local arm of a global nonprofit that supports entrepreneurs in emerging and growing markets, the Prime Minister explained that his visit to the Bay Area was part of a fact-finding mission. He was scheduled to spend the morning sightseeing at Tesla and Sequoia Capital before heading to New York for the United Nations General Assembly this week. But this trip was also about building bridges. In fact, he was advising those in the tech industry to consider setting up shop in Greece, which is expected to regain developed market status from influential index provider MSCI next year.
“I think this is another sign that the economy is doing well and that Greece is no longer treated as a special case,” Mitsotakis said.
Mitsotakis, who earned a master’s degree from Stanford University and called this trip “home,” put economic issues first and foremost during our roundtable discussion. He added that Greece is paying down its debt at a record pace and can borrow more cheaply than the United States. “I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this,” he told the crowd with a laugh.
It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Interest rates are low across the euro area, which explains part of the difference. But it makes for a powerful topic. As of this writing, the Greek 10-year bond yield is about 4.3%, compared to about 5% on U.S. Treasuries. This would have been completely unimaginable during Greece’s 2012 debt crisis, when yields exceeded 40%.
Mitsotakis was similarly keen to talk about how Greece spent the money. For example, he said much of the roughly 36 billion euros Greece received from the EU’s post-coronavirus recovery fund will go into digital infrastructure, including an online portal where Greeks can process government paperwork without waiting in line, and a new supercomputer built with help from Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the port city of Lavrio that will be operational in the coming months to boost Greece’s AI and scientific research.
Unsurprisingly, he also listed policy changes that could be even more important for technology companies. He said Greece is changing the way stock options are taxed, relaxing labor laws and offering much lower taxes for up to seven years to citizens who return to Greece.
He also spoke about the country’s growing visa programs, but when asked how he would measure their success, Mitsotakis said the government “still has work to do” in terms of processing speed.
Separately, he volunteered that a major turnaround was occurring at Greece’s public universities, which he said had long adopted a “radical left approach” that looked down on corporations and were now spinning out start-ups.
Mitsotakis’ larger goal is to bring back the talent lost during the debt crisis, when many young Greeks left the country because they had no other choice. He also sees potential. He suggested that more founders should consider employment in Greece as it becomes harder to obtain a U.S. work visa.
I was struck by the change in tone of the conversation when the topic turned to the impact of AI on society. Mitsotakis was refreshingly candid about the lack of a finalized plan.
Greece, for example, introduced a ban on social media for children under 15 from January this year, a measure that many countries are considering or introducing as well. However, he suggested that the ban may already be outdated, given the seemingly addictive nature of AI chatbots.
“Sometimes it feels like we are already fighting yesterday’s battles,” he said. “What does it mean for children to grow up with digital companions, boyfriends and girlfriends?”
He was equally cautious about AI in the classroom. Greece is running an education pilot using OpenAI aimed at reducing administrative work for teachers, and he is excited about personalized AI tutoring. But he said the benefits depend on whether AI replaces “the hard work of learning basic skills.” He warned that students were already using chatbots to do their homework, adding: “Complacency is a human trait.”
When I asked him about AI infrastructure, and Greece was soliciting investment in data centers, he said the country was an outlier. Mitsotakis said that despite growing opposition to data centers around the world due to the amount of electricity and water required to power them, there was “no major reaction” in Greece. He noted that Microsoft is building a cluster of data centers near Athens, and that AWS recently announced a deal with Greece’s largest electricity company to build the country’s largest data center in a former coal region. Projects are welcome there, he said.
Unlike many politicians, he didn’t pretend to have any answers about what would happen next. Job losses “are what’s going to happen,” he said, and “no government or society is prepared for the speed at which it’s going to happen.”
When it came to the debate over whether AI development should be slowed down, he sided with Frontier Lab leaders and others who have called for a slowdown. “If the people building the models are saying, ‘I don’t know exactly what’s going on in these models,’ we need to listen to them, especially about how they can improve themselves,” he said.
Some form of “smart regulation” is inevitable, he said, and the United States will largely decide what that looks like. Still, he added that Greece would be happy to host the dialogue.
Humans have created “a type of intelligence that is rapidly exceeding the capabilities of the most advanced organs evolution has ever produced,” Mitsotakis said, raising questions about what it means to be human. “I can’t think of a better place to actually have these discussions,” bringing together engineers and “social scientists, philosophers, historians,” he said.
He has a point. Athens is where Socrates spoke to others about what makes a good life and a just society in the agora, the city’s ancient public square. Perhaps the problems still being discussed in Silicon Valley will eventually be resolved there?
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