Greece's PM visits Silicon Valley

Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to San Francisco to promote Greece as a tech destination and admitted he doesn't have answers to many AI questions world leaders are privately debating.

Greece's economic turnaround

Greece is regaining developed market status from MSCI next year and now borrows more cheaply than the U.S., a dramatic shift from the 2012 debt crisis when yields hit 40%.

“I don't know if I should say this”

Digital infrastructure investments

Greece spent roughly 36 billion euros from the EU's post-COVID recovery fund on digital infrastructure, including an online government portal and a new supercomputer in Lavrio to power AI research.

Tax breaks and visa programs

Greece has changed stock option taxation, loosened labor laws, and offers returning Greeks tax breaks for up to seven years to lure back talent lost during the debt crisis.

Universities embracing startups

Greece's public universities have undergone a stark turnaround, moving away from a radical leftist approach that looked down on corporations and now actively spin out startups.

Social media ban for young teens

Greece is banning social media for children under 15 starting in January, but Mitsotakis suggested the policy may already be outdated given AI chatbots' addictive nature.

“Sometimes I feel that we're already fighting yesterday's battle”

AI companions and childhood

Mitsotakis raised concerns about what it means for children to grow up with digital companions, boyfriends, or girlfriends powered by AI chatbots.

AI in classrooms and learning

Greece ran an education pilot with OpenAI to reduce teacher workload and sees promise in personalized AI tutors, but Mitsotakis warned against replacing the hard work of learning basic skills.

“complacency is a human trait”

Data centers welcome in Greece

Unlike many countries facing opposition to data centers, Greece has welcomed investment from Microsoft and AWS, which is building the country's largest data center in a former coal region.

Job displacement is inevitable

Mitsotakis said job displacement from AI will happen and that no government or society is prepared for the speed at which it will occur.

“is something which is going to happen”

AI development should slow down

Mitsotakis sided with frontier AI lab leaders calling for slower development, saying if the builders themselves don't understand what their models are doing, the world needs to listen.

“If the people who are building the models are telling us, 'We're not really sure exactly what's happening with these models'”

Smart regulation is inevitable

Mitsotakis said some form of smart regulation is inevitable and that the U.S. will largely decide what it looks like, with Greece offering to host the conversation.

What does it mean to be human?

Mitsotakis raised the philosophical question of what it means to be human when artificial intelligence is exceeding the capacity of the human brain, calling for technologists to engage with philosophers and historians.

“a form of intelligence that is very quickly exceeding the capacity of the most advanced organ that evolution has ever created”