Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to San Francisco on Monday night to promote Greece, but he also did something that heads of state on trade missions don\u2019t typically do. In front of roughly 250 founders, investors and operators, he said openly that he doesn\u2019t have answers to many of the AI questions leaders around the world are more privately debating.<\/p>\n
The prime minister, speaking with this editor at an event held along the waterfront edge of San Francisco\u2019s Financial District, described his Bay Area trip as partly a fact-finding mission. He\u2019d spent the morning touring Tesla and Sequoia Capital, among other stops, with plans to head this week to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. But the trip was also meant to build bridges; indeed, he was pitching anyone in tech who might consider setting up shop in Greece, which is set to regain developed market status<\/a> next year from MSCI, the influential index provider.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s another indication that the economy is doing well and that Greece is no longer treated as a special case,\u201d Mitsotakis said.<\/p>\n Mitsotakis, who earned a master\u2019s degree at Stanford and called the visit \u201ca homecoming,\u201d made the economic case first and foremost during our sit-down. Greece is paying down its debt at a record pace, and, he added, borrows more cheaply than the United States. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I should say this,\u201d he told the crowd, smiling.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not an apples-to-apples comparison. Interest rates are lower across the eurozone, which accounts for part of the difference. But it makes for a strong talking point. As of this writing, Greece\u2019s 10-year bond yield sits around 4.3%, versus roughly 5% for U.S. Treasuries. That would have been completely unimaginable during the debt crisis, when Greek yields topped 40% in 2012.<\/p>\n Mitsotakis was just as eager to talk about how Greece has spent its money. For example, he said that much of the roughly \u20ac36 billion Greece received from the EU\u2019s post-COVID recovery fund went into digital infrastructure, including an online portal that lets Greeks handle government paperwork without waiting in line, and a new supercomputer assembled with the help of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the port town of Lavrio that he said will come online within months to power AI and scientific research in Greece.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, he also listed policy changes that can matter even more to tech companies. Greece has changed how stock options are taxed, he said, loosened labor laws, and offers returning Greeks far lower taxes for up to seven years. <\/p>\n We also talked about the country\u2019s growing array of visa programs, though when asked how he measures the success of these, Mitsotakis said the government \u201cstill [has] work to do\u201d on processing speed. <\/p>\n He separately volunteered that there has been a stark turnaround at Greece\u2019s public universities, which he said long embraced a \u201cradical leftist approach,\u201d looking down on corporations, and now spin out startups.<\/p>\n Mitsotakis\u2019s larger goal, really, is to win back the talent Greece lost during its debt crisis, when many of the country\u2019s younger citizens left because they had no other options. He also sees an opening: with American work visas getting harder to obtain, he suggested, more founders should consider hiring in Greece.<\/p>\n But the conversation took on a different tone when it turned to AI\u2019s effects on society. Mitsotakis was refreshingly candid about not having a finished plan.<\/p>\n Greece, for example, is instituting a ban on social media for children under 15 as of this coming January, a step many countries are similarly weighing or adopting<\/a>. He suggested the ban may already be behind the times, however, considering the seemingly addictive nature of AI chatbots, too.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I feel that we\u2019re already fighting yesterday\u2019s battle,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat does it mean for our kids to grow up with digital companions or boyfriends or girlfriends?\u201d<\/p>\n He was similarly cautious about AI in classrooms. Greece has run an education pilot with OpenAI aimed at reducing teachers\u2019 administrative work, and he sees promise in personalized AI tutors. But he said the benefits depend on AI not replacing \u201cthe hard work of learning the basic skills.\u201d He warned that students are already using chatbots to do their homework, adding: \u201ccomplacency is a human trait.\u201d<\/p>\n When I asked him about AI infrastructure \u2014 Greece has been courting data center investment \u2014 he described the country as an outlier. Despite growing opposition to data centers across the globe because of the amounts of electricity and water required to power them, Mitsotakis said that \u201cwe have not had any significant reaction\u201d in Greece. He pointed to the fact that Microsoft is building a cluster of data centers near Athens and that AWS recently announced a deal with Greece\u2019s largest utility to build the country\u2019s biggest data center in a former coal region. There, he said, the projects are welcomed.<\/p>\n Unlike many politicians, he didn\u2019t pretend to have answers about what comes next, either. Job displacement \u201cis something which is going to happen,\u201d he said, \u201cand no government and no society is prepared for the speed with which it will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the debate over whether AI development should slow down, he sided with the leaders of the frontier labs who\u2019ve been calling for one. \u201cIf the people who are building the models are telling us, \u2018We\u2019re not really sure exactly what\u2019s happening with these models,\u2019\u201d especially in how they improve themselves, he said, \u201cwe need to listen to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Some form of \u201csmart regulation\u201d is inevitable, he observed, and the U.S. will largely decide what it looks like. Still, he added, Greece would happily host the conversation. <\/p>\n Humanity has created \u201ca form of intelligence that is very quickly exceeding the capacity of the most advanced organ that evolution has ever created,\u201d said Mitsotakis, raising the question of what it means to be human. Bringing together technologists with \u201cthe social scientists, the philosophers, the historians,\u201d he said, \u201cI cannot think of a better place to really have these discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n He has a point. Athens is where Socrates badgered his fellow citizens in the agora, the city\u2019s ancient public square, about what makes a good life and a just society. Maybe the questions Silicon Valley is still debating will end up being settled there, too?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. 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