Greek PM Mitsotakis says societies are unprepared for AI consequences — TechCrunch
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said during a conversation in San Francisco, United States, that governments and societies are not prepared for the speed at which artificial intelligence can displace people from their jobs. TechCrunch reports this following its conversation with the Greek politician.
Mitsotakis was in the San Francisco Bay Area on a working visit, during which he visited Tesla and Sequoia Capital. He also presented Greece as a potential location for technology companies and for hiring specialists. The prime minister noted that the country seeks to bring back talent that left during the debt crisis, as well as attract new technology projects.
AI, education and children
According to Mitsotakis, Greece is set to introduce a ban on social media use by children under the age of 15 from January. At the same time, he warned that social media regulation may fail to keep pace with the development of AI-based chatbots and digital companions.
The prime minister also announced Greece's educational pilot with OpenAI, aimed at reducing teachers' administrative workload. He allows for the use of personalized AI tutors, but stressed that technology must not replace the acquisition of basic skills. Mitsotakis noted that students are already using chatbots to complete homework.
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Infrastructure and regulation
The Greek prime minister said that a significant part of the approximately €36 billion Greece received from the EU's post-COVID recovery fund was directed toward digital infrastructure. Among such projects, he named a state online portal for processing documents and a supercomputer in the port city of Lavrio, created with the participation of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. According to him, the supercomputer is expected to become operational in the coming months for research in AI and science.
Mitsotakis also said that there had been no significant resistance in Greece to the construction of data centers. He mentioned Microsoft's data center cluster near Athens and AWS's agreement with the country's largest energy enterprise to build Greece's largest data center in a former coal region.
In Mitsotakis's view, some “smart regulation” of artificial intelligence is inevitable. He supported calls by executives of companies developing advanced AI models to slow the technology's development if the developers themselves do not fully understand how it works and improves.
