Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis did something unusual for a head of state on a trade mission: he said out loud that he doesn’t have the answers on AI. Speaking to about 250 founders, investors and operators in San Francisco at an event hosted by Endeavor Greece, he said job displacement “is something which is going to happen,” and added that “no government and no society is prepared for the speed with which it will happen,” according to TechCrunch AI.
Most politicians save that kind of admission for closed-door meetings. Mitsotakis said it on stage, in the middle of a pitch for foreign investment.
🏛️ A sales pitch with a confession attached
The economic case came first. TechCrunch AI reports that Mitsotakis used the Bay Area trip, which included stops at Tesla and Sequoia Capital, to court tech companies. His talking points:
- Market status: MSCI is set to restore Greece’s developed market status next year.
- Cheap borrowing: Greece’s 10-year bond yield sits around 4.3%, compared with roughly 5% for U.S. Treasuries. In 2012 Greek yields topped 40%.
- Digital spending: A large share of the roughly €36 billion Greece got from the EU’s post-COVID recovery fund went into digital infrastructure. That includes a government services portal and an HPE-built supercomputer in Lavrio that should come online within months.
- Talent incentives: Changes to stock option taxes, looser labor laws, and lower taxes for up to seven years for Greeks who move back home.
He also pointed to tighter U.S. work visa rules as a reason founders might want to hire in Greece. It’s a smart pitch. Countries now compete for AI talent the way they once competed for factories.
⚡ The data center outlier
The most interesting commercial point was about infrastructure. Around the world, people are pushing back on data centers because of how much electricity and water they use. Mitsotakis said Greece has “not had any significant reaction.”
Microsoft is building a cluster of data centers near Athens. AWS recently announced a deal with Greece’s largest utility to build the country’s biggest data center in a former coal region. That setup matters. When a data center goes up in a region that’s losing its old industrial base, locals tend to see new jobs, not a threat.
This is significant because the supply of “permitting-friendly” places is shrinking. Hyperscalers are running into local opposition in Ireland, the Netherlands and parts of the U.S. Southern Europe could pick up a real share of the next wave of AI capacity.
🧒 Fighting yesterday’s battle
The tone changed when the conversation turned to AI’s effects on society. Starting in January, Greece will ban social media for children under 15. Mitsotakis suggested that policy may already be out of date.
“Sometimes I feel that we’re already fighting yesterday’s battle,” he said. “What does it mean for our kids to grow up with digital companions or boyfriends or girlfriends?”
He was just as careful about AI in schools. Greece has run a pilot with OpenAI to cut down teachers’ admin work, and he likes the idea of personalized AI tutors. But he warned that students already use chatbots to do their homework, and said that “complacency is a human trait.”
On whether AI development should slow down, he sided with the frontier lab leaders who have called for caution: “If the people who are building the models are telling us, ‘We’re not really sure exactly what’s happening with these models,’ we need to listen to them.” He expects some form of “smart regulation” and thinks the U.S. will largely decide what it looks like.
🔭 What the next 1-3 years likely look like
What stands out here is the gap between how fast leaders move on infrastructure and how slowly they move on social policy. Mitsotakis admitted that gap openly. Here’s where I expect it to lead:
- Regulation shifts from platforms to companions. Age limits built for social feeds will expand to cover AI chatbots and companion apps. If you build consumer AI products, plan for age verification and usage limits now.
- Mid-sized countries compete on AI infrastructure. Greece, Portugal and Poland will sell cheap permitting, available power and a friendly public. Companies choosing where to build should look beyond the usual hubs.
- Education policy splits. Schools will welcome AI for admin work and restrict it for learning. EdTech companies that can show their tools build real skills, instead of doing the work for students, will get the contracts.
- Workforce planning becomes a national issue. When a sitting prime minister says no society is ready for the pace of job losses, businesses should expect retraining requirements and possibly new rules on layoffs.
If you run a company, the practical move is to treat child safety, education impact and job effects as design requirements today, before they show up as regulations. Mitsotakis was honest that governments are behind. That also means the companies that act first will help shape the rules.
The full conversation, including more on Greece’s university spinouts and visa programs, is available at TechCrunch AI.