Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis participated in a conversation with Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, in the context of an event organized by Endeavor Greece at the Pnyx. The discussion was moderated by the co-founder and CEO of Endeavor Linda Rottenberg. The Prime Minister’s remarks follow:
In his opening remarks, referring to the Pnyx and ancient Athens, as well as the influence of artificial intelligence on him personally and the opportunities it offers, the Prime Minister noted:
Well, first of all, it’s a great pleasure to be joining you again. And let me start by thanking Costanza, Panos and the amazing Endeavor team for the great work that they have done. I would like to mention as an introductory remark that Endeavor has been a terrific partner to the government when it comes to studying and crafting policy around the technology innovation and AI, and whenever we try to engage with a very vibrant ecosystem of Greek innovative companies, the first point of contact is always Endeavor. So thank you very much for the tremendous job you have done, and also thank you to all of those who devote time and resources to actually support Endeavor.
Now, of course, this place is very special, and I know it must be quite difficult for you to focus on the discussion when you have this amazing view behind us.
For those of you who don’t know, after many, many decades, this is the first time you can actually see the Parthenon without scaffolding. So it is a pretty unique view and a reminder that this is literally the place where democracy was born.
And every time I return to the history of this place, it always stuns me what an innovative concept it was that citizens of a city-state decided to actually take the decisions regarding their own future by themselves without a despot or a king or a pharaoh being in charge and acting as the overarching authority.
So they picked this place. They actually moved from the Agora at some point to this hill, and this is where very important decisions have been taken. You just have to read your Thucydides to understand what it meant for the Assembly of the People to gather here, to listen to speakers who are still enshrined in history speaking, and then collectively and democratically deliberating the future with some correct decisions, some very wrong decisions.
But again, the ancient Greeks struggled with and studied the various political arrangements and were very much aware that also a democracy has its own weaknesses. It has strengths, but it has also weaknesses. So these references, I think, are always quite relevant. So enough with the history because we could go on for hours. This place is particularly inspiring.
In terms of what has changed, we actually had a very interesting discussion today and it is actually very difficult for a policymaker to keep up to speed with the dramatic changes that are taking place in the AI space.
So we are again fully committed to implement but also update our main AI strategy, which we devised a couple of years ago.
And I see Constantinos Daskalakis in the audience. He was quite instrumental in helping us trying to understand what AI means for a government. And I’m sort of quite intrigued by the ability and the opportunities that we have in terms of teaming up with big AI companies to run interesting projects, run pilots, to try to see how we can make the business of government more effective and what it does mean to integrate this technology in the delivery of public services.
I’m sure we will talk because I’m fascinated about hearing today’s discussion, what it means to use AI in healthcare. And I’m stunned by the capabilities that AI agents have and the degree of sophistication that one can build into these agents.
We were actually discussing today that we thought that AI was good at, and still obviously is very good at dealing with repetitive tasks. But we were discussing this concept of what does an “AI nurse” mean that can actually talk empathetically and support a patient that never gets tired, never gets bored, never gets angry and is available 24/7. So we constantly see sort of more opportunities.
The big problem is we see more opportunities than we can actually digest as a government. And keeping up to speed and picking our battles in terms of the projects that we actually want to run and making sure that we focus on those verticals where we can actually be cutting edge in terms of globally leading and offering our partners.
And we’ve worked closely with General Catalyst and tell them, “come here and let’s try different things. See what works, and then we see what we can roll out”. And we can also talk more as the discussion goes on, on what we have done and the pilots that we have run with other companies.
When asked to comment on the warning issued by Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis regarding the risks posed by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated:
Okay, I have tremendous respect for Demis, and in my interactions, I always found him very sophisticated and conscious about the consequences of what he is actually building. I cannot necessarily say this same thing about other tech leaders who are obsessed with this idea of being a week or a month ahead of their competitors.
So it is very, very clear to me that the more sophisticated these models get, the fewer people actually understand exactly what is happening with them and how they actually become better and better. And I’m certainly not one of them. And of course, what I also sort of read, the two essays which I did recently by the CEO of Anthropic, on the sort of the dark and bright side of AI, one has to be concerned because the tail risk of something going wrong is just enormous. It’s too big to ignore.
Having said that, do I sense that the US is currently in the mood to put the brakes on these technologies and establish some sort of regulation that will try to contain the possibility that something can go wrong? I have my doubts about this, and I don’t even know how it would happen.
So I am not particularly optimistic that this is a possibility. Because one should also be aware that there is a clear arms race now between the US and China about – and this is a question of real strategic dominance when it comes to the technology of the future. And I’m sure this is also something that actually is on the mind of many US policymakers.
And then, of course, there’s what you said, because at the end of the day, abundance cannot only be the creation of massive wealth, wealth that is almost incomprehensible for a few shareholders of a few companies. This is the recipe for major social unrest, and eventually the calls to rein in this wealth creation to the policymakers are going to be stronger and stronger.
I mean, it happened if you look at the financial history in the late 19th century, at some point the state intervened and broke up companies and said, “you are just too big to manage”. And of course now we’re talking at a different scale.
But having said that, if scale attracts capital, if the “currency” of these companies, which is their share price, is just so powerful that they can literally suck up any company that they want by offering a fraction of their market cap, I mean, these companies are really so powerful that right now we are in a place where it’s difficult to contain.
Υou mentioned the question of nurses, which is very interesting, because when I look at things from my perspective, we have a chronic shortage of nurses. It’s not just a Greek problem, it’s a global problem. We try to make the profession more attractive, but we’re not being very, very successful, although we pay our nurses better. So if one can add technology to the job that nurses are doing, as long as this does not mean replacing the job of a nurse, this is actually a positive sum project, because I can do more with the same number of people.
I can take workload, maybe bureaucratic workload from the nurses and allow them to do what they’re doing best, which is engaging with patients and taking the critical decisions that only they can take.
If I can, for example, for teachers, which is exactly the project that we run with OpenAI, if I can take workload in terms of class planning away from them by using AI, this means that they will have more time in the classroom.
But if there is so much value to be created, and if the valuations are correct, it means that we’re talking about huge efficiencies. And huge efficiencies will inevitably lead to replacement of labor. And this is the next big battle that will involve the relationship between governments and the technology companies. Otherwise, we’ll be talking about huge bubbles in terms of valuation.
So two things can happen, and sorry if I’m very blunt here: It’s either this, these valuations are either a bubble or the efficiencies are going to be so massive that they will cause a displacement in the labor force the likes of which we have never seen. So both scenarios are not particularly good.
So we are at an inflection point. So we spoke about the positives, but we also, as a policymaker, I need to be also aware of the fact that we are currently at a point where things could go wrong very quickly.
When asked about Greece’s collaboration with major companies, such as ElevenLabs, and about the role of the Greek diaspora in bolstering the Greek economy, the Prime Minister said:
Well, the answer is very simple. My wife, who is the founder of Endeavor Greece, the one who convinced you to bring Endeavor to Greece when I failed – as disclosure, I know Linda since our days at Harvard College, so we go back many, many years.
My wife is half Polish, so the connection to Poland is very obvious. I have a sort of a very positive predisposition towards Poland.
But the partnership with ElevenLabs is just one example of the sort of projects that we want to run with AI companies that want to partner with us. And they have tremendous expertise in AI around voice, and I’m particularly fascinated by this one project that we run where we try to preserve traditional dialects in various parts of Greece, which are again spoken by fewer and fewer people.
This is just one example of how we can actually use AI to leverage our huge cultural heritage, which is again a big priority for us because the Greek language now even has an official Greek Language Day recognized by UNESCO.
And we thought that this was one of those interesting projects where we can actually team up with one of the rapidly growing AI companies and create something which is also of interest to them.
And of course, let me highlight what Rafal said before: the partnership with ICEYE has been, I think, very productive for both the Greek government and ICEYE.
We’re not just customers of your satellites, but you actually built a team in Greece from scratch, brought back talent from abroad, very sophisticated people who are eager to come to Greece, and you have taken the decision to actually set up a production facility that will actually produce and manufacture very sophisticated SAR satellites in Greece -we’re talking about 150 satellites per year-, which could employ more than 250 people.
So this is an example of what Greece has to offer as a place where actually these types of companies can do business. We can be a customer for your products -the same is true for many of the defense startups-, but we can actually be a place where you can build not just for the Greek markets, but for the European or for the global market.
And why is that the case? Because we have excellent talent. We have talent in Greece that is.. you said, “why not go to Silicon Valley?” Well, first of all, you can’t get a visa in Silicon Valley these days, I imagine. This is probably one of the problems. But you just look at the wages you can pay in Greece, and you can still pay competitive wages by Greek standards and attract amazing talent, and it’s going to be much cheaper than abroad.
So we have an amazing talent base in Greece. We have great universities. These universities are not necessarily just located in Athens or Thessaloniki. So we have great technical skills also outside these cities, and we have an amazing diaspora. So these people want to return to Greece, and why wouldn’t they if they have a good job? I mean, this place offers amazing sort of quality of life. I think this is pretty self-explanatory.
So this is a combination that would allow companies like ICEYE, not just to do business with the Greek government, but also to set up a real sort of a real presence here, whether it’s an R&D center or whether it’s an actual production facility.
So I use this as an example of what more we can do with foreign companies and, again, not just looking at the Greek market. Εspecially when we talk about defense, which is a very interesting sector because our whole mindset towards defense is changing. And it’s a challenge because we need to convince our generals that defense is not just about big ships and expensive planes and platforms, but defense is about innovation constantly.
It’s a mindset about how you upgrade your capabilities constantly. But what I’ve told my Department of Defense is, “please set aside a small chunk of your budget, and let’s just give small contracts to these companies”. It’s a tiny percentage of our overall expenditure. But if these companies have a proof of concept, and they have a customer in the Greek Armed Forces, then they can also go abroad and leverage this. And something good is going to come out of this.
I’ll just give you one example of an amazing innovative project we did with MIT, where we brought back a Greek professor to actually train our tech guys in the Armed Forces on sea drones and on very sophisticated swarm systems. I don’t understand any of this, okay, but it’s an example of how Greek know-how is brought back into Greece and then how hopefully we can work with Greek companies or Greek shipyards, put the hardware and the software together and produce something that is going to be useful to us, but also potentially exportable outside Greece.
When asked about Greece’s decision to ban minors under the age of 15 from accessing social media platforms starting in early 2027, Kyriakos Mitsotakis replied:
Well, first of all, just interesting that you mentioned the Italian company, but they IPO’d on the NASDAQ and not on a European stock exchange. Let’s just keep that in mind also about the importance of what we call the Savings and Investments Union and the ability to actually pool capital and raise capital in Europe. And the tremendous importance of actually putting together this EU Inc. regime, which would allow a company, for example, to register in any country, any European country that they want and seamlessly operate in Greece. I mean, still follow labor legislation and pay their taxes in the country that they operate, but they could register anywhere without having difficulties doing business in Europe.
We still have not solved these problems, and it’s going to be necessary if we really want to leverage the single market, which we currently do not do. And I’m sure you’re aware of the difficulties of operating in various European countries, and we have an obligation to make your life easier if we want to convince companies like ICEYE to actually stay in Europe.
Now, back to the topic of social media, look, when we talk, I don’t need to look at more scientific evidence to understand that we are running an experiment with the brains and the mental health of our kids and our teenagers, and that we already have enough evidence that spending too much time on social media is more damaging than beneficial. So if that is indeed the case, and whenever we talk to parents, they are actually frantically encouraging us to do something to get the kids off, especially their phones and especially away from this sort of addictive scrolling. I mean, what is our obligation as policymakers?
Do we just hope that the tech companies are going to self-regulate or do we do something more drastic in sending a clear signal that kids, in our case, this is what we will legislate, kids under 15 should not have access to the big social media platforms, full stop.
Because that’s the only way you can actually also send the signal to parents that they can go to their kids and say, “look, this is illegal”. Because right now the peer pressure is just incredible. Even if you try as a parent of a 12-year-old to tell your kids, “okay, I will put whatever parental controls I can”, and these tools already exist, your kid is just going to turn around and say, “but all the other kids have it, so why can’t I?” And this is just a losing battle. Anyone who has any teenage kids knows what I’m talking about.
So I’ve also urged the European Union to provide a European regulatory framework that would allow us to actually implement these decisions. They’re not there yet. What Ursula von der Leyen announced is, I think, a couple of steps behind what I was expecting in terms of being more ambitious because we also have what we call the Digital Services Act, which is our blanket regulation when it comes to digital services, and we need to ensure that we can comply with that.
So I will continue to push not just the Greek policymakers- the decision in Greece has been taken- but also European policymakers that we need a European regulatory umbrella to protect our kids and our teenagers from social media.
And of course, the next battle is going to be AI. And what does AI mean for education? Αnd we’re already having these discussions with teachers, and I’m sure it’s a problem also in the US and in US colleges. I mean, inevitably, I think, the grading is going to move away from papers and back into exams or oral examinations, because of the ability of AI to write any paper better than all of us.
But at the end of the day, are we offering our kids too many tools to make them complacent? What does it mean to put the effort in writing a good essay? I mean, we’ve all gone through this. We studied together at Harvard, and we know how difficult it is.
And how difficult it is to actually write something and put the effort into it. So there is a thin line between productivity and complacency. And when we talk about kids and the way their brains are developing, I think we really risk robbing our kids from fundamental skills which they need as they grow up, including many social skills which they simply cannot have if they simply interact digitally.
And what does it mean at the end of the day to have a digital boyfriend or a girlfriend? Have we really thought about this? Have we thought about it philosophically? What would Plato or Aristotle think about this? I would encourage us all to really contemplate these issues from a philosophical or an ethical perspective because this is not something that comes from the future, this is already here.
And of course, what I’m trying to do is get kids – I think the best investment that we can make, public investment, is to build more sports centers for our kids, get kids active, get kids to exercise, get kids into arts and music and theater. But there’s clearly something happening that could potentially be very damaging.
And we’re just scratching the surface when we just focus on social media, because AI is already here and it is going to reframe, completely reframe the relationships. Because even when we talk about a “digital nurse”, and I can see the point of, for example, you have someone who’s lonely and elderly and they need to talk to someone. But what does it really mean about the nature of humanity itself?
And sorry if I’m becoming a little bit too philosophical, but I can share with you that I actually, I said, “okay, I do a lot of speeches, so can I – maybe I should have my digital speechwriter.” It’s very easy. You just load all my speeches, everything I’ve said to a nice agent, and there you have your “digital Prime Minister” who can speak like me, who can write like me, and who could even debate me. So imagine what it would mean to actually have a debate with my digital twin.
I mean, I delivered one speech using my digital sort of assistant, and it felt really awkward. I want to be very honest, it felt really awkward. It felt as if there was a mirror image of me being able to speak like myself, but it was not me.
So, I said “no, I can do my speeches online, I’ll drop it”. But it would make me, it could make me more productive. It would make me more productive. I would spend less time on what I do. But no digital speechwriter would ever be able to do what we’re doing here, to take interactions from the audience, to take cues from the audience. So there are limits also to what it can do.
But still, I want to urge us all to think about the philosophical dimension of these questions, especially when it comes to the relationships that our kids have with a digital world and with their new digital friends.
In response to a few brief questions, the Prime Minister stated:
Linda Rottenberg: The next 10 years in one word: hopeful or worried?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Worried, if I have to choose between the two.
Linda Rottenberg: A technology love that has nothing to do with AI.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, maybe it has something to do with AI. Fusion.
Linda Rottenberg: Oh, interesting.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: If AI could solve fusion, then fusion will solve AI.
Linda Rottenberg: Okay, one book, ancient or modern, that every founder and every politician should read?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, what else? The Peloponnesian War.
Linda Rottenberg: The most overrated idea in AI right now, the most overrated.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: No idea.
Linda Rottenberg: Okay. Last, Athens in one word.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: This place.
In his closing remarks, responding to a question about the course of history following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the Prime Minister noted:
Well, it is indeed interesting when I try to understand the discontent of a young generation of kids who may be graduating from college today. And you just look at the world and the challenges that were faced: geopolitical realignment, AI not making it predictable what sort of career they should follow, climate change already being present, this whole notion of what it means to live in both the physical and the digital world.
And I compare it to how optimistic we were when we graduated. We both graduated in 1990, okay? And I remember the Wall, the Berlin Wall coming down. And at the time, we felt that opportunities were endless. This was a time when Fukuyama wrote “The End of History,” that liberal democracies, free markets are the final stage of human development and everyone is going to organize their societies in the same way. But I think we failed to, I think, study the history of capitalism, and that capitalism is by nature associated with excesses, with corrections, with social discontent, with people being left behind.
And we also failed to underestimate elements, important elements of human nature, which are more important than just profit or being financially well off. I mean, this whole concept of the dignity issues of identity, issues of belonging, these are hardwired into our DNA. This is how we evolved as a species. And these issues are again becoming very important. So I think for us, for today, I mean, the challenge is how do you balance between those two extremes.
And I think we’ve proven in Greece that you can be a moderate, centrist government that believes in the free market but also in the power of the state to regulate markets, that recognizes the need for fiscal responsibility but also requires the state to be more efficient in the delivery of public services, and that at the end of the day understands that profound inequality is catastrophic for social cohesion. So when I look at our policies, we’ve raised the minimum wage by 41%, which is way above inflation.
So we do understand that in a society that is well functioning, of course, there will be people who do better and they will create wealth and they will drive progress. But at the end of the day, coming back to where you started from, the extremes of the wealth creation and the degrees of inequality we’re seeing, we have not seen in human history. And it is something which is very, very difficult to defend and to accept, and I fully understand why it causes discontent.
So to complete on a positive note, you can win elections by being a moderate centrist, you can defeat the populists by delivering on your promises, which is what we have done. And we are now in the position, we have a pretty good chance of winning a third, another term, because we take the business of government very, very seriously.
And taking the business of government very seriously is to be able to understand the new opportunities, to harness the benefits, because there are tremendous benefits in terms of efficiency when it comes to the state and to help our civil servants become more effective and to offer services which would have been unimaginable, while at the same time managing the downside and fighting those battles which we think are worthwhile fighting. So this is something which can be done.
Don’t lose hope in the US. It’s not necessary that politics are going to always stay so polarizing. I think Greece offers an example of what it means to lead in times of great turmoil.
As he bid farewell to the audience, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said:
Greece is open for business. I have to make my pitch to all of you who are here. Just talk to Rafal and to other people who have set up shop here, they’ll give you the spin much better than I can.
