Abstract:
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis recently visited San Francisco, USA. At an event for about 250 entrepreneurs, investors and people in the technology industry, he expressed candid views on the development of artificial intelligence and its impact on society, education and employment. He said that in the face of many problems brought about by artificial intelligence, governments around the world have not yet prepared complete answers, and the speed of technological development has made traditional supervision and social governance methods face increasing challenges.
Mitsotakis’ visit to San Francisco this time is, on the one hand, to promote Greece and hope to attract more technology companies, entrepreneurs and investors to set up business in Greece. On the other hand, it is also an inspection trip to understand the US technology industry. He visited institutions such as Tesla and Sequoia Capital that day, and later planned to go to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Mitsotakis himself earned a master's degree from Stanford University, so he called his trip to San Francisco a "homecoming."
On economic issues, Mitsotakis first emphasized the economic changes in Greece in recent years. He said that Greece is reducing government debt at an unprecedented speed, and the current borrowing costs are even lower than those in the United States. However, this comparison is not entirely comparable, as overall interest rates in the Eurozone are lower than those in the United States. As of the time of the report, the yield on Greek 10-year government bonds was about 4.3% and the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds was about 5%. In contrast, Greece's financing environment was extremely poor during the debt crisis, with the 10-year government bond yield exceeding 40% in 2012.
Mitsotakis also emphasized that the large amount of EU funds that Greece has received in the past few years is promoting the digital transformation of the economy. Greece received approximately 36 billion euros from the EU recovery fund after the COVID-19 epidemic, a considerable part of which was invested in green transformation and digital infrastructure. For example, the Greek government launched the gov.gr online government affairs platform, allowing people to handle a large number of government procedures online that used to have to be completed in queues. At the same time, Greece is also building a new supercomputer system in the port city of Lavrio. The equipment is being built by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others. It is expected to be put into operation in the next few months to provide computing power for Greece's artificial intelligence applications and scientific research.
In order to attract technology companies and talents, Greece has also adjusted some policies in recent years. Mitsotakis said the government has changed the tax policy on stock options, relaxed some labor regulations, and provided lower tax rates for up to seven years for domestic talents returning to work in Greece. Greece has also launched a series of visa projects, but when asked about the actual effectiveness of these projects, he admitted that the government still had room for improvement in terms of the speed of visa processing.
Mitsotakis also talked about the changes in Greek public universities in recent years. He believes that Greek universities are shifting from their past status to pay more attention to entrepreneurship and are beginning to produce more and more start-ups. The Greek government hopes to attract back young talents who left Greece during the debt crisis. As U.S. work visas become more difficult to obtain, he also believes that some American technology entrepreneurs may consider recruiting talents or establishing R&D teams in Greece.
However, when the topic turned to the impact of artificial intelligence on society, Mitsotakis' attitude was significantly more cautious. He admitted that he did not have a complete plan ready.
Greece plans to ban children under the age of 15 from using social media starting from January next year. This policy echoes similar measures that are being considered or have been implemented in France, Denmark, Australia and other countries. But Mitsotakis believes that as artificial intelligence chatbots rapidly become more popular, such policies may soon seem to lag behind reality. He said that sometimes he has a feeling that "we are already fighting a war of yesterday" because society now not only needs to consider the problem of children's addiction to social media, but also must face the possibility of children establishing long-term relationships with artificial intelligence, such as using AI as a digital companion, boyfriend or girlfriend.
In the field of education, Greece has launched an artificial intelligence education pilot with OpenAI, which mainly helps teachers reduce administrative workload. Mitsotakis believes that if artificial intelligence can take on repetitive tasks such as lesson preparation and homework preparation, it can allow teachers to spend more time on classroom teaching. He is also optimistic about AI tutors customized according to students' personal conditions, believing that this technology has the potential to change the traditional education model.
But he emphasized that artificial intelligence cannot replace the effort students must make to learn basic skills. For example, if students just let the chatbot complete the assignment directly, they may lose the process of actually learning writing and other basic skills. He pointed out that human beings are naturally inert, and it is becoming easier and easier for students to complete homework with the help of chatbots. The education system has begun to face the problem of how to determine whether the homework is completed by the students themselves and which content comes from artificial intelligence.
For artificial intelligence infrastructure, Greece is currently actively attracting data center investment, and Mitsotakis believes that Greece is significantly different from some other countries. In recent years, community movements against the construction of large-scale data centers have emerged in many regions around the world. The reasons are mainly related to the huge power and water needs of data centers. But Mitsotakis said that there is currently no obvious social opposition in Greece.
Microsoft is building a data center cluster near Athens, and Amazon Cloud Technology (AWS) recently announced that it will cooperate with Greece's largest utility company to build Greece's largest single data center in West Macedonia. Western Macedonia used to be an important coal-producing area in Greece. As Greece gradually reduced its coal power generation, the local area originally faced the problem of job losses. Therefore, the government believes that new digital infrastructure such as data centers can bring new economic opportunities to the region, and related projects are currently welcomed locally.
But Mitsotakis believes that compared with the energy and water consumption of data centers, the impact of artificial intelligence on the job market may be a more serious issue that needs to be faced. He bluntly stated that the disappearance of some jobs due to artificial intelligence "will happen" and that no government or society is ready for the speed of this change.
As for whether the development of artificial intelligence should be slowed down, Mitsotakis said that he is inclined to listen carefully to the warnings from companies and researchers who develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence models. He believes that if the people who build these models admit that they do not fully know what is going on inside the model, especially what changes the model may undergo as it improves itself, then society needs to take these concerns seriously.
He also believes that some form of "smart regulation" is ultimately inevitable, and that future artificial intelligence regulatory rules may be largely shaped by the United States. In contrast, Europe is currently more of a technology user than a major creator of cutting-edge technology in terms of artificial intelligence technology. However, he said Greece is willing to become a platform for global discussions on the regulation and social impact of artificial intelligence.
Mitsotakis also raised a more macro question. He believes that humans have created an artificial intelligence that is rapidly surpassing the processing capabilities of the human brain, making "what does it mean to be human" once again become a real question. He believes that artificial intelligence is no longer just a technology industry issue, but a major issue involving ethics, philosophy, social structure and human beings' own positioning.
Therefore, he hopes that future discussions about artificial intelligence will bring together people from the technology industry and researchers from different fields such as sociologists, philosophers, and historians. It could also become a unique opportunity for Greece. After all, Athens was once the place where Socrates discussed with citizens in the ancient forum what was a good life and a just society. Now, as artificial intelligence begins to re-raise the most fundamental questions about human society, the Greek government hopes that Athens can once again become the place where these questions are discussed.
Throughout the conversation, Mitsotakis did not try to provide definite answers to all the questions in the artificial intelligence era. Instead, he repeatedly acknowledged that the government is facing a new technology field that is developing at a speed that far exceeds the traditional policy-making cycle. In his view, social media regulation may no longer be enough to meet the challenges of the next stage. The regulation of education, employment, data, infrastructure, and artificial intelligence itself all need to be rethought. For a country that is struggling to rebuild its technology industry from the shadow of the debt crisis, Greece hopes to seize the economic opportunities brought by artificial intelligence while also trying to get ahead of the social and ethical issues that this technology may bring.
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