Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told an Endeavor Greece gathering in San Francisco on 21 September that AI would displace workers faster than governments or societies were prepared to respond. Speaking before roughly 250 founders, investors and operators, he said the displacement was inevitable and no government or society was prepared for its speed, TechCrunch reported.
Key points
- Mitsotakis expects AI-driven job displacement to outrun government and social preparations.
- He questioned whether Greece’s planned social media ban for children under 15 addresses the effects of AI chatbots.
- He expects the United States to have a decisive role in how AI is regulated, while Greece courts technology investment.
Mitsotakis expects decisions on AI regulation in the US
Mitsotakis made the remarks during a Bay Area visit that combined meetings with technology companies and an investment pitch for Greece. He had visited Tesla and Sequoia Capital earlier that day and planned to travel to the UN General Assembly in New York. The warning about employment came alongside his account of what Greece could offer companies considering a presence there.
Asked about slowing AI development, Mitsotakis said policymakers should heed the people building frontier models when they express uncertainty about how those models work and improve. He expects some form of regulation, but said the United States would largely determine its shape. Greek City Times reported that he also described Greece as operating within EU AI rules, rather than being free to write an entirely separate national code.
That leaves a distinction in his position. Mitsotakis called for attention to warnings from model builders while placing the main regulatory contest in the United States. His remarks about jobs went further than either point: he predicted displacement and said the institutions that would have to respond were unprepared for its pace.
Greece courts Microsoft, AWS and Nvidia
On the investment side of the visit, Mitsotakis said Greece had put much of the roughly €36 billion it received from the EU’s post-COVID recovery fund into digital infrastructure. He cited a government portal for handling paperwork online and a supercomputer assembled with Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Lavrio. He said the machine would come online within months for AI and scientific research.
He also pointed to changes in stock-option taxation and labour law, and to lower taxes offered for up to seven years to Greeks who return. Mitsotakis wants to attract people who left during the country’s debt crisis and suggested that founders facing difficulties obtaining American work visas consider hiring in Greece. Asked about the country’s visa programmes, he acknowledged that processing speed still needed work.
Mitsotakis said Microsoft was building a group of data centres near Athens and that AWS had announced an agreement with Greece’s largest utility for a data centre in a former coal region. He said Greece had seen no significant public reaction to such projects, despite opposition to their electricity and water use elsewhere. His account of local support is an assertion about the reception of those projects, rather than a measure of their eventual demands on either resource.
Greek City Times reported that Mitsotakis met Nvidia executives, including John Josephakis, and toured the company’s chip research centre during the California trip. He also met people working in health, education, automation and robotics at Sequoia Capital. The meetings put his appeal for technology investment alongside his warning about the speed at which the same industry could alter work.
Greece’s under-15 ban meets AI chatbots
Children provided Mitsotakis with another example of policy struggling to keep up. Greece is moving to bar children under 15 from social media, but he questioned whether that measure would address their relationships with AI chatbots. “Sometimes I feel that we’re already fighting yesterday’s battle,” he said, asking what it would mean for children to grow up with digital companions, including AI boyfriends or girlfriends.
In schools, Greece has run a pilot with OpenAI intended to cut the administrative work teachers do. Mitsotakis said personalised AI tutors had potential, provided their use did not replace “the hard work of learning the basic skills”. He also warned that pupils were using chatbots to complete homework. Those concerns concern how children use the systems, beyond the social media services covered by the planned restriction.
Greece’s social media ban for children under 15 is due to begin in January 2027.
