In an unfamiliar scene among world leaders who visit Silicon Valley to promote their countries, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chose a different approach during his meeting with about 250 founders and investors in San Francisco. Instead of claiming to have ready-made answers, he openly admitted that he does not know many of the answers to the big questions that artificial intelligence poses to the world—questions that most leaders prefer to discuss behind closed doors.

A Visit to Build Bridges and Explore the Future

Mitsotakis, who holds a master's degree from Stanford University, described his visit to the Bay Area as both a "homecoming" and a fact-finding mission. He visited major companies such as Tesla and the Sequoia Capital fund before heading to New York to attend the meetings of the UN General Assembly. But the deeper goal was to invite technology companies to invest in Greece, which is expected to regain its classification as a developed market next year from MSCI, the benchmark authority in market classification.

An Economy Recovering Steadily

The Prime Minister focused his remarks on the economic gains his country has achieved. Greece is paying off its debts at a record pace, and is even borrowing at a lower cost than the United States, as the yield on its ten-year bonds is about 4.3% compared to nearly 5% for US Treasury bonds. Although this comparison is not entirely fair due to lower interest rates in the eurozone, it remains a striking indicator compared to the 2012 debt crisis when Greek yields exceeded 40%.

He explained that a large part of the roughly 36 billion euros Greece received from the European Recovery Fund after the pandemic was directed toward digital infrastructure, including:

An online portal that allows citizens to complete their government transactions without waiting in lines.
A new supercomputer built in cooperation with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the coastal city of Lavrio to support AI and scientific research.

Policies to Attract Talent and Capital

Mitsotakis outlined a package of reforms aimed at attracting technology companies, including adjusting stock option taxes, easing labor laws, and granting returning Greeks reduced taxes for up to seven years. He also spoke about the growing visa programs, admitting that the government "still has work to do" to speed up its processing procedures.

His larger goal is to bring back the young talent that left the country during the debt crisis, noting that the difficulty of obtaining US work visas may push founders to hire in Greece instead.

AI and Society: Questions Without Answers

The tone of the conversation changed when he turned to the impact of artificial intelligence on society. Starting in January, Greece will impose a ban on social media for children under fifteen, but Mitsotakis felt this measure may already be too late in the face of addictive chatbots. He said frankly: "I sometimes feel that we're fighting yesterday's battle. What does it mean for our children to grow up with digital companions?"

He showed the same caution toward the use of AI in education. Although Greece launched an educational pilot in cooperation with OpenAI to reduce administrative burdens on teachers, he stressed that the benefit is conditional on the technology not replacing "the hard work of learning fundamental skills," warning that students use chatbots to complete their homework because "laziness is human nature."

Data Centers and Future Regulation

Unlike many countries facing growing opposition to data centers due to their enormous consumption of electricity and water, Mitsotakis described Greece as an exception, pointing to the country's welcome of Microsoft projects near Athens and the Amazon Web Services agreement to build the largest data center in a region that once relied on coal.

The Prime Minister did not pretend to have solutions for what is coming, admitting that job displacement "will inevitably happen, and no government or society is prepared for the speed at which it will occur." He supported calls by leading lab executives to slow down model development, saying: "If the people building these models say they're not entirely certain what's going on inside them, then we should listen to them." He concluded that some form of "smart regulation" is inevitable, and that Greece is ready to host this dialogue.

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