Who Decides What AI Serves
Greece is preparing major constitutional changes, including an amendment requiring that artificial intelligence serve human society. Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined the proposed revisions on Thursday, saying they were needed to safeguard future generations amid global concerns about AI’s risks to democratic governance and humanity itself. The state is reaching for the constitution to manage a technology already being folded into everyday life, while the people most exposed to its effects are expected to trust the apparatus will keep up.
Mitsotakis told lawmakers from his governing center-right party, “It’s very important that, in this process of constitutional revision, we take care of the world that will host our children.” He said the proposed changes would include a provision stating: “Artificial intelligence shall serve the freedom of the individual and the prosperity of society, ensuring that risks are mitigated and that the advantages it provides are fully realized.”
He also said, “These challenges already dominate today: from the climate crisis and protection of water resources to renewable energy sources, but above all the use of artificial intelligence,” adding, “This great revolution must also be constitutionally placed at the service of individual freedom and social well-being.”
The Legal Cage Around the Machine
Dozens of other changes would include expanding postal voting, increasing mandatory schooling from nine to 11 years and banning retroactive taxation. The lengthy revision process involves a series of votes by two successive parliaments and typically requires some cross-party support. That is the familiar ritual of institutional power: a slow-moving constitutional machine, dressed up as public protection, with the final shape of the rules still filtered through parliamentary bargaining.
The article says Greece has been an eager adopter of AI and modern technology since emerging from a major financial crisis eight years ago, upgrading border surveillance and rebuilding its tax administration. A powerful government services platform now manages everything from obtaining a divorce to buying tickets for domestic soccer matches. The same state that wants AI framed as a servant of freedom has already used technology to tighten administrative control, extend surveillance, and centralize services through a single platform.
Last month, the government unveiled plans for a full social media ban for children younger than 16, saying it was intended to pressure the European Union to adopt similar rules. The move shows how the state’s preferred answer to digital risk is not public control from below, but more top-down restriction, with children and families left to absorb the consequences while officials posture for Brussels.
Private Platforms, Public Oversight, and the Data Hoard
Some constitutional experts in Greece argue AI must be legally required to serve democracy because major private technology platforms now hold enough data and power to operate beyond effective public oversight. That is the core problem the article identifies: private platforms have accumulated enough data and power to step outside meaningful public scrutiny, and the answer being floated is to write a safeguard into the constitution.
Evripidis Stylianidis, the government’s lead lawmaker on the constitutional revision, said the changes would serve as a long-term guardrail on AI use. He told state radio Thursday, “Many issues today are defined at the international level,” and added, “The protection and proper use of artificial intelligence touches all human rights in daily life and is something that must concern us in the constitutional revision.”
His words place the issue neatly inside the state’s preferred lane: constitutional revision, parliamentary votes, long-term guardrails. But the article also makes clear that the pressure comes from a world where major private technology platforms already hold enough data and power to operate beyond effective public oversight. That is the hierarchy in plain view — corporate systems accumulating power, and governments scrambling to catch up with legal language after the fact.
The proposed amendment says artificial intelligence shall serve the freedom of the individual and the prosperity of society. The government says the revision is about safeguarding future generations. The experts say private platforms have grown too powerful for effective oversight. And the state, having already expanded surveillance, rebuilt tax administration, and centralized services through a powerful government platform, now wants to write a constitutional promise around the machine it has helped normalize.
The result is a familiar arrangement: power concentrates first, then institutions move to regulate the damage, while ordinary people are told the paperwork is the protection.