Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis traveled to San Francisco on Monday night with an unusual message for the tech community. Speaking before roughly 250 founders, investors and operators at an event hosted by Endeavor Greece, he openly acknowledged that he doesn’t have all the answers to the complex questions about artificial intelligence that world leaders are grappling with behind closed doors.
The visit served a dual purpose. Mitsotakis, who earned a master’s degree at Stanford, spent his morning touring facilities at Tesla and Sequoia Capital as part of what he described as a fact-finding mission. But he was also there to pitch Greece as an attractive destination for tech companies and talent, highlighting the country’s remarkable economic turnaround.
The numbers tell a compelling story. Greece is set to regain developed market status from MSCI next year, marking a dramatic reversal from the debt crisis that devastated the country’s economy. The prime minister pointed out that Greece’s 10-year bond yield currently sits around 4.3 percent, compared to roughly 5 percent for U.S. Treasuries. This stands in stark contrast to 2012, when Greek yields topped 40 percent during the height of the debt crisis.
Mitsotakis emphasized how Greece has invested the roughly 36 billion euros it received from the EU’s post-COVID recovery fund. Much of that money went into digital infrastructure, including an online government portal that allows citizens to handle paperwork without waiting in line. The country has also partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise to assemble a supercomputer in Lavrio that will power AI and scientific research in Greece.
Beyond infrastructure, Greece has implemented policy changes designed to attract tech companies and talent. The government has reformed stock option taxation, loosened labor laws, and now offers returning Greeks lower taxes for up to seven years. These moves are part of a broader effort to win back the talent that left during the debt crisis and to position Greece as an alternative for founders facing increasingly difficult U.S. visa processes.
The conversation took a more nuanced turn when discussion shifted to AI’s societal impacts. Mitsotakis was remarkably candid about the challenges ahead. Greece is instituting a ban on social media for children under 15 starting in January, but the prime minister suggested this policy may already be outdated given the addictive nature of AI chatbots. “Sometimes I feel that we’re already fighting yesterday’s battle,” he said, questioning what it means for children to grow up with digital companions.
On education, Greece has run a pilot program with OpenAI aimed at reducing teachers’ administrative work, and Mitsotakis sees potential in personalized AI tutors. However, he expressed concern that students are already using chatbots to complete their homework, warning that “complacency is a human trait.”
Greece has also been actively courting data center investment, with Microsoft building facilities near Athens and AWS announcing a deal with the country’s largest utility to construct a data center in a former coal region. Unlike many places around the world, Mitsotakis noted that Greece has not faced significant opposition to these energy-intensive projects.
When it comes to the broader questions about AI’s impact on employment and society, the prime minister didn’t claim to have easy answers. He acknowledged that job displacement “is something which is going to happen,” and admitted that no government or society is prepared for how quickly it will occur. He sided with AI lab leaders calling for caution, saying that when the people building AI models express uncertainty about how these systems improve themselves, policymakers need to listen.
Mitsotakis suggested that some form of regulation is inevitable, and while the United States will largely decide what that looks like, Greece would welcome hosting the conversation. He argued that bringing together technologists with social scientists, philosophers, and historians to discuss what it means to be human in the age of AI would be fitting for a country where Socrates once questioned his fellow citizens about what makes a good life and a just society.
