“You won’t lose your job with ChatGPT. You’ll lose your job for someone who knows how to use ChatGPT,” points out Bill Olette, CEO of MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship and author of Disciplined Entrepreneurs: 24 Steps. Regarding the Greek economy, he makes himself particularly optimistic, expressing his assessment that the Greeks during the crisis “gained muscles that will come in very handy” as the country rebuilds. He even believes that Greece has every reason to demonstrate a “highly effective model of democracy.” Bill Olette, considered a guru in innovation and entrepreneurship, will visit our country on March 30 and 31 to participate in the 25th annual conference of the MIT Global Startup Workshop, which will be held in Athens.

“The main reason someone doesn’t take the plunge is simply because they don’t need to. Today we have a fairly prosperous society, and people strive for comfort, this is a biological fact. But they finally make the move when they really need to. Look at Japan. After World War II, it was the most enterprising country in the world. It was the period of creation of all these companies. Then it became prosperous, so now it is among the least enterprising countries. So it has to do with the environment the person is in. Today you see huge business activity in places like Israel, South Africa and even North Korea. It is known that “hungry dogs hunt better.” You can’t make someone an entrepreneur if they don’t want to. However, whoever chooses to do so can do so. We all have it, 100%.

– Exactly! Otherwise, if people were wealthy, they would say: “Why shouldn’t I go to the beach?” If you don’t need it, then why do it? Unless you’re crazy like so many of us who just love this game and will play it anyway.

You can’t make someone an entrepreneur if they don’t want to. However, whoever chooses to do so can do so. We all have it, 100%.

– Indeed, the pace of technology development and change is getting faster and faster every day. We have been saying for many years that the world will never be slower than it is today. The number of ChatGPT users reached 1 million in five days. Five days! It took months for Spotify or Instagram to achieve this and they were considered unique businesses back then. Everyone today should have business skills. You must see change as an opportunity and have the right mindset to embrace it rather than stop it. A student of mine said the following a few weeks ago: “We entrepreneurs don’t want to weather the storm. We go out into the storm and dance in the rain.” This is the kind of thinking we need. Change is not a threat, it is an opportunity. When you think like this, you go out and use it by developing your skills to make something positive out of change. So I think this is how the current era affects the approach to entrepreneurship. An MIT professor recently told me, “We should stop our students from using ChatGPT. For exams this year, we will close the doors and they will write the answers on sticky paper.” I told him it was crazy! Why don’t we give them stones and hammers instead? Instead, we should encourage ChatGPT. You won’t lose your job with ChatGPT. You will lose your job because of someone who knows how to use ChatGPT. Consider if we have begun to ban other applications and transfer, for example, data manually. How crazy is this? Instead, we should all sit down and just look at how to use ChatGPT, not how to disable it. Let’s see what his weaknesses are and improve them. This is how the conversation should be. How will we seize another opportunity to make the world a better place?

It’s now March 2023. If someone does not answer “artificial intelligence production”, then I do not know what they can observe around them. It certainly does not follow developments in real time. What is happening with artificial intelligence is a profoundly radical change. The future is here, right now. We just need to see how we handle it. As an entrepreneur, you must love change. Where there is change, there you should be. This does not mean that opportunities are not everywhere. You can tell me: “I’m interested in journalism.” I’ll tell you “well done” and you will probably use artificial intelligence to change journalism.

– I must say that I was surprised when I first came to Greece and said: “Wait, there are only 10 million people here?”. Judging by the Greeks I see at MIT and elsewhere, I thought there were hundreds of millions of you! The influence of Greece on the world is enormous, as is the number of successful Greek entrepreneurs. The Greeks find a way. And, as you said, they did not let the crisis pass in vain. Greece has gone through difficult times during which they have been building muscle that will come in very handy as the country emerges from the crisis. I am very optimistic and this is one of the reasons why I am going to Greece again. What is being done in your country with the support of universities, government and big business is really important for entrepreneurship and for society as a whole. Now we have a crisis of democracy, which is very sad. However, democracy depends on educated and motivated citizens. To have such citizens who will act wisely, you need to give people three things: hope, pride and courage. Entrepreneurship provides all three of these elements. So if you develop entrepreneurship in a country where democracy was born, you will build a model of high-performing democracy, avoiding the nonsense that you encountered in another case.

• Listen to all the interviews on the next episode of the podcast “The Money Pod” next Wednesday at kathimerini.gr.