OpenAI and Government of Malta partner to roll out ChatGPT Plus to all citizens

https://openai.com/index/malta-chatgpt-plus-partnership/

by bookofjoe • 2 months ago

333 320 2 months ago

openai.com

mock-possum• 2 months ago

Smart move, just wish a more ethical outfit was making it.

hello84025• 2 months ago

Smart move, just wish a more ethical outfit was making it.

EU created software like Mistral is no different

arvid-lind2• 2 months ago

Mistral is no different

come on now, surely you're not serious.

rendx• 2 months ago

"Malta’s AI for All initiative will offer people of all backgrounds the opportunity to learn how AI can be used responsibly through a course developed by the University of Malta. The course is designed to help people understand what AI is, what it can and can’t do, and how to use it responsibly at home and work. After the course is completed, citizens can access ChatGPT Plus for one year at no cost to them."*

julianlam• 2 months ago

for one year

snort

dawnerd• 2 months ago

Gotta get them hooked and reliant on it. It’s why they subsidized the entire software industry to adopt it.

34df2• 2 months ago

OAI really believes LLMs are going to have the same revolutionary effect as personal computers did.... lmao.

sauercrowd• 2 months ago

TL;DR: they made a course for citizens

zitterbewegung• 2 months ago

Would be interesting long term if this sways public opinion about data centers in Malta. I do support though AI literacy in general and this is a good step. Would wonder about the deal in how much this is actually costing Malta if at all.

purrcat2597• 2 months ago

Unlikely. Other than the telcos there's only one proper commercial datacentre here. Space is very constrained and the electricity supply stability + summer heat aren't a fun combination

SOLAR_FIELDS• 2 months ago

As a complete layman, I do wonder why you would bother building a datacenter at a place that everyone agrees is going to be basically underwater in the next 50-100 years.

preisschild2• 2 months ago

OpenAI is inherently incentivized to sell as much LLM compute as possible, that is not neutral "AI literacy". You don't let tobacco companies make anti smoking education either.

charcircuit• 2 months ago

You don't let tobacco companies make anti smoking education either.

Many jurisdictions literally force them to put education on the boxes.

Yokohiii• 2 months ago

What has this to do with AI literacy?

emsign4• 2 months ago

Data centers in a country that has barely enough water and electricity for its citizens? That is utterly ridiculous. This AI hype is going crazy, it's all an insane joke, right?

tomwojcik2• 2 months ago

Malta makes money with igaming and money laundering. There's literally no other businesses there, other than basic necessities, and even these barely work. It's only focused on entertainment.

They import food and water. Malta is very hot during the summer. There's AC unit everywhere and it's a default cooling unit as well, as there's no "European winter" there. Everyone collects rain water and stores it on the roof.

They are one tsunami away from being decimated.

There's one company renting servers and it's full of online casinos, just so the companies meet the regulatory requirement.

Malta is the worst place on earth to have a data center I can think of.

vasco2• 2 months ago

You forgot tourism which is their largest money maker.

purrcat2597• 2 months ago

Literally no one I know in the 30+ years I have been here collects rainwater on their roof. Whats your source, r/malta?

thenthenthen• 2 months ago

Up until 2026 you could also buy a eu passport in Malta for ~690k euro.

chm024• 2 months ago

Most of your comments have nothing to do with operating a data center, and seems like you have some ill feelings towards Malta. Tourism, manufacturing, financial services are all other industries apart from igaming. Parts of your phone are likely to be made in Malta.

Presumably what you refer to as "money laundering" is the impression that Malta attracts foreign investments by offering regulation for poorly regulated industries and tax incentives. Which is essential to maintain competitiveness as a small state. You'd be surprised to hear that most money laundering in Malta is not tied to the igaming industry at all.

Malta is not a good place for a data center because real-estate is expensive and cooling is expensive.

blfr• 2 months ago

The subsidies deployed by the industry are so massive I don't even know if consumers need public assistance here. It's kinda like the gov was subsidizing web hosting or basic banking. The price for a regular consumer already barely hovers above zero.

Just look at this list of services included in Google's AI Pro subscription[1]. Google took everything it could think any consumer might need and bundled for $20/mo. There's even $10 GCP credit (that you can use for AI API calls).

[1] https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/14534406?hl=en

dwa3592• 2 months ago

Thank you for this comment and holy cow, I have the pro subscription and didn't know it came with that many bells.

ecommerceguy• 2 months ago

I had a free 3 month trial I just terminated. I deemed it too expensive.

loloquwowndueo3• 2 months ago

Free is too expensive? Were you expecting to get paid for using it?

HDBaseT4• 2 months ago

As a Student, I got 1 year for free. Purchasing a new Pixel will also give 1 year for free.

gwerbin• 2 months ago

It's a ploy to drive adoption. Once it's considered essential they can turn the screws in massive contracts with governments, big enterprises, universities, and public school systems. Probably some genuine competition on price, but the equilibrium price is probably below cost and not sustainable.

loloquwowndueo3• 2 months ago

First step of enshittification :)

conradev• 2 months ago

The government does subsidize basic banking, though?

weird-eye-issue2• 2 months ago

If only it came with YouTube Premium... Most of that list is just AI in existing products which is not all that interesting. You get better value and models through ChatGPT or Claude especially if you are a developer

LeoPanthera• 2 months ago

It does come with a discount for YouTube Premium.

pishpash• 2 months ago

That's not close to "everything ... any consumer might need". It's a list of useless things, other than 5TB of storage. Granted, cloud storage typically sells for more than this, so they are offering Gemini for something like -$15/mo.

alfiedotwtf• 2 months ago

To be honest, PR pieces don’t all need to go on HN, especially when this is probably not news worthy to anyone here except Maltese living in Malta

GaggiX2• 2 months ago

I'm not Maltese and I did find it interesting.

muwtyhg• 2 months ago

Could you articulate what part you find interesting?

varispeed2• 2 months ago

Can't imagine the size of brown envelope. Handing over your entire nation's thoughts to a foreign company operating under US Cloud Act in normal circumstances would be considered a risk to national security. Why not invest in home grown talent and companies?

morkalork• 2 months ago

Worse than that, it's bi-directional. The model's responses and tuning now influences a whole nation of people.

netsharc• 2 months ago

It's an interesting way to control the population.. let them delegate thinking to systems, and then just control the systems to respond to your (you = government) preference.

My analogy is using AI is like using a navigation system, you can end up delegating everything to it and drive into a river...

applfanboysbgon3• 2 months ago

Malta is the size of a small city, I don't think national security or investing into home grown companies comes into play here.

phillc732• 2 months ago

Malta is part of the EU. I am personally very surprised about this partnership, just in the context of data security, privacy and the GDPR. How is the privacy of these EU citizens protected when all their prompts and data is sent to OpenAI? How do these EU citizens submit a request for all their personal data to be deleted from OpenAI records, a right they have under the GDPR with a compliant data processor?

ninjahawk1• 2 months ago

I’m personally not a fan of OpenAI always referring to their model as “providing intelligence as a utility.” Sounds very condescending, are you saying this isn’t something we already have? If that’s the opinion, may be good to reflect on how the models were trained. On millions upon millions of books which no authors were compensated for.

But that’s besides the point, the whole initiative is self-defeating by design. This isn’t like power, it’s something humans do inherently possess, this is simply a way to amplify what already exists. Intelligent people using AI generally seem to be more productive than when they don’t use it, and lazy or unintelligent people generally see cognitive decline, at least based on what I’ve heard online but I could be wrong on that.

So saying “this is where you get intelligence” is both false marketing and destructive to OpenAI as a company, since by all definitions, it isn’t true.

arcanemachiner• 2 months ago

I’m personally not a fan of OpenAI always referring to their model as “providing intelligence as a utility.” Sounds very condescending, are you saying this isn’t something we already have?

Your body also generates electricity and natural gas. Do you also get upset when energy companies claim to provide these services as a utility?

malfist2• 2 months ago

Is the electricity or natural gas that your body produces a defining feature of humanity?

Does AI actually provide intelligence?

raq98• 2 months ago

"Humans also produce farts" is a new low. Can the AI people be interned or moved to some seasteading libertarian hellhole so the rest of us can live a normal life?

Muromec6• 2 months ago

I’m personally not a fan of OpenAI always referring to their model as “providing intelligence as a utility.” Sounds very condescending, are you saying this isn’t something we already have?

We do and we don't. If you would go out there and talk to a random person about elliptic curves and matrix multiplications and whether you hit a performance ceiling in a specific 2x2 multiplication thingy with Karatsuba and wnaf, they would not know half the words, but the lying and flattering machine will be able to hold the conversation.

The thing will not get all things right and bullshit me about DSTU4145 using normal basis, will lie about A being set to 1 for all standard curves, but it's definitely more intelligence that you can get from a taxi driver.

If it's not general superintelligence right there for five bucks a piece, I don't know what is

malfist2• 2 months ago

Is a dictionary intelligent?

preisschild2• 2 months ago

We do and we don't. If you would go out there and talk to a random person about elliptic curves and matrix multiplications and whether you hit a performance ceiling in a specific 2x2 multiplication thingy with Karatsuba and wnaf, they would not know half the words, but the lying and flattering machine will be able to hold the conversation.

Wikipedia has existed for decades...

34df2• 2 months ago

None of those things qualify as intelligence.

Is a calculator intelligent? I can 'talk' to it via pushing buttons.

pizza• 2 months ago

you can say the same thing of the watts in a person too

delusional• 2 months ago

providing intelligence as a utility

Lol, they are literally just promising to make people fungible. Tale as old as time.

martin-t2• 2 months ago

Then perhaps their signalling isn't meant for you but for people who have to pay those pesky expensive intelligent people like translators, programmers, designers and writers. Those people would benefit greatly if they could rent intelligence much cheaper from companies like OpenAI.

kovek• 2 months ago

LLMs are like a search engine that autocompletes. It's a tool.

neon_me• 2 months ago

... rather than that, they should prepay everyone a few hours of therapy and aroma sticks. A waaay more profit in the long game.

MagicMoonlight• 2 months ago

It’s a shame ChatGPT is total trash now.

Muromec6• 2 months ago

Thanks CCP for having providing one that is as lying and flattering but cheaper.

syngrog662• 2 months ago

Facts for context:

Malta has a population of only 550k.

Everyone in Malta could already, before this deal/plan, and even without it now, use ChatGPT (or any other LLM model/service, whether free or premium.)

purrcat2597• 2 months ago

Citation needed. I haven't heard of this.

I'm Maltese so feel free to be as detailed as needed.

collingreen• 2 months ago

They are saying that the product is already available then implying a government deal on behalf of all citizens doesn't matter because the product is already available.

syngrog662• 2 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malta

https://chatgpt.com

rtlambh• 2 months ago

A gambling, money laundering and Mafia paradise where journalists are killed for investigating the Mafia partners with OpenAI. A match made in heaven!

Next, force an eyeball scan on the peasant population.

purrcat2597• 2 months ago

Unfortunate thats the reputation we have :(

eska• 2 months ago

I used to work for a hosting company, and all the shady business like exploitation of children and sex workers came from there unfortunately. But that’s because people move their business there for legal reasons, not because of their residents I assume.

Muromec6• 2 months ago

Eyball scans are already there on the border for other people. So are AI turrets shooting people on sight, just a different border

musicale2• 2 months ago

What could possibly go wrong?

musicale2• 2 months ago

Nothing, apparently.

decimalenough• 2 months ago

It's a one year free trial, after that it costs money.

Sophira• 2 months ago

And only after a mandatory course, if I'm reading the article correctly.

alpinisme• 2 months ago

Honestly depending on how it’s implemented the course could be really socially useful, both for establishing some baseline knowledge that could help avoid some of the pitfalls of too-credulous use of AI and for spurring people to innovate in their local businesses because they’ve been exposed to ideas earlier than would happen “naturally” as ideas just percolate through society

emsign4• 2 months ago

What a great marketing campaign. How huge was the bribe from OpenAI to the Maltese government to sell out their citizens?

sMarsIntruder• 2 months ago

It’s like what Perplexity did with the PayPal userbase.

Not sure why a bribe would’ve involved: it’s a win-win situation, especially near elections.

1295817• 2 months ago

The comments here were not sufficiently obsequious towards AI companies, so the submission dropped from the front page to page three in minutes.

That is how AI boosterism works here.

foxglacier• 2 months ago

How?? Are you saying there's a lot of silent AI-boosters on HN voting it down despite almost every single comment here being non-obsequious? Looks like your model of reality has detached from modelling reality.

eashG• 2 months ago

Your comment does not even internally make any sense. Go ask a clanker, 80 IQ guy.

hello84025• 2 months ago

The comments here were not sufficiently obsequious towards AI companies

Tech employees worried their stock will drop in value (laugh emoji)

martin-t2• 2 months ago

Surely the deal is beneficial for both sides.

For OpenAI because they get a lot of money and and for the government because they can keep tabs on how people use LLMs to make sure they're not doing anything naughty.

627467• 2 months ago

Openai seems to be fast forwarding the original Facebook playbook: lobbying for regulatory moat and now OpenAI zero[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Zero

lucaspiller2• 2 months ago

I run some numbers, how much would it cost to build MaltaGPT - sovereign hosted ChatGPT.

Malta has a population of 500k. Let's assume 100k people use MaltaGPT daily, and they send an average of 10 messages per day, so roughly 1M messages per day. That averages 694 per minute, but at peak could be 3-5x that, so let's say 3000 per minute. Usage will of course vary by day of week and time of day (they could partner with a Pacific island and share inference hardware).

Those 3000 messages per minute translate to 50 messages per second. Let's say average prompt input is 5k tokens, and output is 500. So 250k tokens per second for prompt processing (let's ignore caching for simplicity) and 25k tokens per second for output decode.

If we take a 500B dense model, that concerts to roughly 1 trillion flops per token. So we need 250 petaflops per second of prompt processing and 25 petaflops for output decode. So 275 PFLOPS in compute.

That may sound like a lot, however a NVIDIA DGX B200 machine (8xB200) has a compute of 144 PFLOPS at FP4. That is assuming 100% efficiency which isn't really possible, and we also need to factor in memory usage which we would be limited more by than compute. So let's say we'd need 10 of them. For an entire country to have a sovereign version of ChatGPT.

The cloud cost to rent one machine is around $50/hour, so that would mean our cluster comes to $4.8m per year. However the list price of a machine is around €400k, so the price to buy the cluster outright would be around €5m (you need the rest of the data center too), with operating costs of around €500k per year.

So per citizen: €10 upfront and €1 per year.

iririririr• 2 months ago

showed the same reasoning to a fortune500 before moving to cloud (mind you, we already had the data centers paid for). didn't matter, went full on aws because we got a 40% discount on first year. something along the way of the bad decision triggered some exec bonus. so along the whole company went.

martinbfine• 2 months ago

Welcome to the 1990's internet days redux in the form of AI! Can't wait for the new AI devices and Web 4.0! So exciting!

arvid-lind2• 2 months ago

You can't even imagine what the AI of Things will look like!

sidcool• 2 months ago

All that data on all Malta citizens. Remember, if you're more paying, you're the product

zamadatix3• 2 months ago

Remember, if the government says it's free it almost certainly means the people are actually paying for it.

EGreg• 2 months ago

Yes and even if you are paying, you’re still the product!

That’s whats happens in two sided markets. Everyone’s the product.

The original adage of “if you’re not paying, you’re the product” doesn’t necessarily rule out the converse. The fact that the grandfather comment made a freudian slip makes it funnier.

akomtu• 2 months ago

Not long ago nearly everyone in the anglosphere had a habit to talk to a pastor, revealing all the dirty secrets under the veil of anonymity. The Church was an incredibly informed organization. Today OpenAI & Anthrophic are re-creating a parody on that tradition: people talk to an AI pastor, under the veil of anonymity, and divulge their darkest secrets.

hello84025• 2 months ago

All that data on all Malta citizens. Remember, if you're more paying, you're the product

EU-created domestic software is no better

Actually it’s worse. You still surrender your data but get a worse user experience

exabrial• 2 months ago

Gosh how generous of malta government officials to transfer those tax earnings straight to the 1%ers pockets

rchaud• 2 months ago

The EU is probably footing the bill for most of it. Part of the funding Malta receives goes towards "digital projects" along with green tech and SME support.

sharpshadow• 2 months ago

It’s a voluntary two hour online AI course with 1 year ChatGPT premium reward. Getting AI basics to the people with playground.

emsign4• 2 months ago

Getting free data from every Maltese citizen rather.

Rohunyyy• 2 months ago

Data if you pay. Data if it is free. At this point is there any software that is used by the general public that isn't tracking you ?

hello84025• 2 months ago

Getting free data from every Maltese citizen rather

EU software also collects your data

At least American software is good

If you’re gonna give up your data, at least use the better American software

layer86• 2 months ago

Are you saying that OpenAI will deliberately violate the GDPR in Malta?

irishcoffee• 2 months ago

Nauseating.

I run local models. They're fun to play with. I get a bit of a dopamine hit when it works.

They're selling addiction. This is fucking disgusting.

hbarka• 2 months ago

Next, maybe Anthropic can make Sicily an offer it can’t refuse.

nixass5• 2 months ago

Malta is a country, Sicily is a region

yellow_lead• 2 months ago

A country is a region.

fragmede5• 2 months ago

with a president called Renato Schifani.

hello84025• 2 months ago

Malta is a country, Sicily is a region

Regions can sign deals too…?

hmottestad• 2 months ago

I assume this is a joke about corruption.

frm88• 2 months ago

Anthropic has Iceland, OpenAI has Greece and now Malta.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropic-and-iceland-announc...

https://openai.com/global-affairs/openai-for-greece/

ashirviskas3• 2 months ago

That's so interesting. Kind of explains company directions - quality vs quantity.

BLKNSLVR• 2 months ago

As long as death isn't on the line. They wouldn't want to fall for one of the classic blunders.

I'm just wondering when the US will finally put boots on the ground in Iran...

dbbk• 2 months ago

Buy Sicily? At least that would make money

emsign4• 2 months ago

WTF? Corruption?

KnuthIsGod• 2 months ago

Malta is an important component of Russia's money laundering Laundromat system.

"Malta’s corruption is not just in the heart of government, it’s the entire body"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/03/malta-...

big-chungus4• 2 months ago

This article is more than 6 years old

flawn• 2 months ago

Corruption is like cancer.

monegator2• 2 months ago

Malta is also where a lot of the fraudolent call centers are based

oliwarner2• 2 months ago

Yup, and their Transparency International score has been getting worse since, with only a small improvement this year.

maltesegirl4• 2 months ago

This article gives a distorted view of my country. We have a largely normal government with normal levels of corruption. You can compare Malta to a municipality in a big country. I have lived in many north western European countries and at the municipal level I personally witnessed the same levels of corruption, that in my native Malta would be considered the biggest scandal of the year. It's all a matter of framing, propaganda and geopolitics.

zwaps• 2 months ago

Well the business model of Malta is being a tax evasion haven and access port for oligarchs.

That’s quite a difference to most other European countries, although not all.

AlecSchueler2• 2 months ago

in many north western European countries and at the municipal level I personally witnessed the same levels of corruption, that in my native Malta would be considered the biggest scandal of the year.

Could you give examples of a few of these to illustrate the kind of thing we're talking about? It currently feels a bit hand wavy from both sides.

LtWorf3• 2 months ago

Do you think blowing up journalists is "normal levels of corruption"?

Panoramix• 2 months ago

What does that have to do with ChatGPT?

huijzer• 2 months ago

You didn’t even mention the Knights of Malta yet. They claim to care for the poor, but Prince Bernhard also within a year of signing up ordered naked girls for an evening which caused his secretary, J. Thomassen, in march 1950 to quit. Other Knights of Malta were other Dutch royals, 3 FBI directors, and the father of JFK.

lpolovets• 2 months ago

It's sobering to think that if every single person in Malta -- an entire country! -- signed up for ChatGPT and used it weekly, ChatGPT’s WAU would increase by only a few tenths of a percent.

aaronbrethorst• 2 months ago

Malta has a population of 574,000 people. That's slightly more people than transit through the NYC metro area's airports on a daily basis.

Yes, ChatGPT has a large user base, but Malta's not a particularly meaningful datapoint in terms of the population size.

layer86• 2 months ago

Only by around half a tenth of a percent.

foxfired• 2 months ago

We had a mandatory ChatGPT training course at work. You had to sign up in limited space classes. This is a large company, needless to say it was chaos to get a significant number of people to participate.

I got a spot. We were shown how to copy and paste data from excel and other data sources into the chat interface. We had sample data to work with, there was always someone in class who would say "mine didn't work." The developers in the room asked about codex, the instructor said she wasn't a developer.

We did get a certificate though. There was nothing they could teach that you couldn't learn by using the free version in your own time. Whatever they are doing with the Maltese government is just to increase the monthly active user count.

altmanaltman• 2 months ago

The fact they have to resort to these tactics does not bide well for the company that wants to create AGI or go bust.

GCUMstlyHarmls• 2 months ago

Oh I don't know, it seems like a good step forward towards regulatory capture. First partner, then certify, then require the certification. A limited regional beta, like launching your app in New Zealand first.

pembrook• 2 months ago

You do understand if every person in Malta were to use chatgpt regularly it wouldn’t even show up as a blip on their MAU chart

Cue up the next cynical bad take.

rvnx7• 2 months ago

In practice since this is valid for a year it is essentially a free-trial they are giving away and they hope that it may generate additional revenue at some point after that

darkwater• 2 months ago

But if you can prove any kind of success with Malta then you can go to the next 10 "slightly bigger" nations out there and tell them "See? It worked very well with Malta". And then move to a bigger layer, and a bigger layer...

MattDamonSpace• 2 months ago

Half of people are below average, these classes raise the floor they don’t expand the ceiling

KronisLV• 2 months ago

Then they sound good, same as basic computer literacy classes!

rwmj• 2 months ago

They lower the ceiling since now the other half have to deal with the AI slop.

jpfromlondon• 2 months ago

They certainly add hay to the haystack

sethops1• 2 months ago

Fun fact, studies show human performance follows a power distribution, not a normal curve, implying _most people are below average_.

https://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151860154/put-away-the-bell-c...

rukshn• 2 months ago

I’m now responsible for improving AI literacy in the organization I work.

But the people in charge just want the employees to just answer some questions so they can handover Claude or Chat GPT licenses so they can show people are using AI to improve productivity.

There are people who don’t know when to use AI and when not to use Ai and think they can just Claude their way through everything. I wanted to change that but when the whole idea is to just increase AI use I guess they don’t care about how AI is used.

ffsm82• 2 months ago

I was on a quarter demo the other day and the project lead for ai innovation was talking about the things he's preparing for the company.

I will not address the things he pitched (as coming soon), as I'm a developer and (hopefully) not the target audience, but I was quiet surprised when they made a questioneer asking how many people use ai and how frequently. (The target demographic was middle management, product owners etc)

75% of people answering said they're using it daily and considered it an essential tool they need to work

Considering it was anonymous I was expecting lower numbers, honestly.

xyst• 2 months ago

So my electricity bills are rising just so corporate idiots can increase an internal metric.

Fuck all of this.

smeggysmeg• 2 months ago

The leaders who mandate AI have no understanding on how to actually use it for productivity. They use it like a Magic 8-Ball to confirm whatever ignorance they have and believe the hype that it can do anything.

liveoneggs• 2 months ago

Just have IT roll out OpenClaw to everyone, connect it up to their emails, chats, password managers, etc and then click "go".

Why not?

throwaway894345• 2 months ago

I agree with you, but also it’s not entirely unreasonable to just use AI (or any other tool) and let them figure out over time what are and aren’t good uses. This approach requires an ability to see past the next quarterly earnings report, which is a rare quality for a business, but it can be healthy. The long term result is likely to be a culture that is more AI literate than they would be if they had top down instruction. The optimal path is probably a bit of both, but if I had to pick a ditch it would be “trust my employees”.

The thing I have a real issue with, and which seems more common, is the belief that they can cut raises because AI will make them more productive. In that case, the best employees (read: those most capable of leveraging AI effectively) will leave to find better paying work and the remainder will be too busy with the additional workload to have time to figure out how to use AI to make themselves more efficient.

encrux• 2 months ago

For everyone in the EU: Copying and pasting sensitive data (like customer data) into AI tools is a violation of the GDPR, and potentially the AI act, which will be enforced soon.

These violations come with hefty fines.

realityking• 2 months ago

You’re brushing too broad a stroke GDPR only affects personal information. There’s plenty of sensitive business information that is not covered by GDPR - for example per business customer revenue data - that is legal to put into an AI tool but your employer may not want you to.

rvnx7• 2 months ago

I would be cautious to advocate these laws that strongly in the context of AI tools:

Companies and employees always make their decisions based on a risk/reward basis.

Sometimes a commercial contract (like Microsoft Copilot) is enough to cover your ass and to meet the needs of the regulator.

Even if the operator is exactly the same.

Laws are constraints to navigate, but if you are successful enough (ahem, rich) then they don’t apply to you.

At the moment what the EU wants is to make sure that in the long-term they can access your private information.

Realistically if you are in the EU you have more risks telling your darkest secrets to a EU-hosted model that the government will arrest you, than to a Chinese-model (who doesn’t collaborate).

EU Chat Control, is here to protect kids and protect you from terrorists; you don’t want to claim you support pedophiles right ?

So following these rules is always a matter of choice.

Respect and you will be stuck with your shitty Mistral and no privacy, not respect and you have your shiny Claude that you have to think what to input inside.

Tenoke2• 2 months ago

It depends heavily on what type of data though. As far as I understand if you have no PII or anything close to it you are mostly safe - especially if it's customer data but aggregated.

olalonde• 2 months ago

You got a certificate though.

realty_geek• 2 months ago

My saddest interaction recently was with a friend with a 1st class degree in computing and several years experience in software engineering in many prestigious companies.

I asked if he had tried out Claude code or anything similar. His answer: My company has scheduled a training course in that so I'll wait

wartywhoa236• 2 months ago

So sad indeed, a man is left out in the cold waiting for his turn to receive a stochastic-brain-implant-as-a-service.

wise_young_man• 2 months ago

It’s sad to you that they have a life outside of work?

rrr_oh_man• 2 months ago

in many prestigious companies

That's the hint. Most companies >50 employees suck.

westmeal• 2 months ago

I don't get what's sad about that

dvfjsdhgfv2• 2 months ago

It's hard to detect sarcasm these days but in case you're being serious, not everybody will share your feelings.

zer0tonin• 2 months ago

This site really has become a parody of itself.

epolanski• 2 months ago

Similar things happen in different non-tech companies I know.

But nobody uses LLMs that aren't Gemini or Copilot enterprise, as they are already on Google cloud or Microsoft offering already.

And there's high pressure on workers to find use cases where AI can boost productivity, with bonuses dangling on who finds real case scenarios.

I don't know about the results of these experiments, but I know unhappiness is widespread.

jpc02• 2 months ago

My favorite right now.

"Make the AI do xyz"

That clearly needs a custom harness to integrate with ORG tooling.

"No we won't pay for token usage, make it work with the subscription were already paying for"...

Guess you don't want AI then...

bartread• 2 months ago

We were shown how to copy and paste data from excel and other data sources into the chat interface.

Grnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnguuurnnngh.

I remember the copy and paste drudgery from the early days of ChatGPT. It was a miserable and joyless experience. Nowadays (and for a long time) you can simply attach the file.

layer86• 2 months ago

You are not providing any argument for why the course developed by the University of Malta should match your experience.

Tenoke2• 2 months ago

We did get a certificate though.

As someone who never bothered to get any certificates (beyond a University degree) even when I'd do online courses (of which the most course-like must've been fast.ai), are these ever actually useful in any manner?

stingraycharles• 2 months ago

They are useful for getting a job, that’s about it.

In our case, we get our entire team AWS solution architect certs as well just so we can always tell our customers that our whole team is certified (we do a lot of “forward deployed” stuff for enterprise customers).

jellyfishbeaver• 2 months ago

There are so many stupid "courses" and SaaS tools doing this I imagine that the value of the many of these certificates is close to 0.

Many of them you can simply take the exam over and over until you pass, and then stick a shiny stupid badge on your LinkedIn profile.

benhurmarcel• 2 months ago

In his case of a large company, I’d expect that completing the useless training is necessary to get access to the tool. That’s how it worked in mine.

michaelbuckbee• 2 months ago

This sounds an awful lot like the early how to get on to the internet highway classes that existed. I don't think the classes had a lot of worth in the strict educational sense of like "here's how you do X Y & Z" but... We're I think much more effective at saying, you know, "X Y & Z are now possible."

It does take time and a little skill to know the edges of the AI tools. What's reasonable? What's not? What's likely to hallucinate? You could get something in the rough bounds of trust.

I can see a class helping with that.

vultour• 2 months ago

I’ve never gone through a paid training course that wasn’t a complete waste of time. It’s at the point where people at work know there isn’t even a point in offering these to me. “But why don’t you take the Terraform training?” Because I’m not going to waste my time with a 3-day course where it takes the first day to install and configure Terraform. I can install it on my computer in 5 minutes. I think people usually see these as a paid vacation, but I find them so insufferably boring I’d rather just work.

bookofjoe• 2 months ago

Yes! Forty years ago (c. 1985) members of our department of anesthesiology (University of Virginia Medical Center) were offered an optional two full day course on how to do our own MedLine searches so as not to have to put in a request to the biomedical librarian for same.

I jumped at the chance to not have to be in the OR from 7am-5pm doing the same old same old but instead relax and learn something useful.

Bad choice.

The instructor and material were deadeningly boring; I couldn't even begin to enter into the computer the right search request format and terms and as I sat there I was reminded of my days in elementary school watching the big round clock on the wall tick away the minutes until the final dismissal bell.

Because our chairman was in the class and had encouraged all of us tenure-track faculty to take the course, I couldn't bail after the first day but had to return for the second day.

Subsequently I continued using the biomedical librarian to request my searches (it took just a couple minutes to fill out the form) with excellent results.

ergocoder• 2 months ago

There was nothing they could teach that you couldn't learn by using the free version in your own time.

That's true for almost everything in life.

Whatever they are doing with the Maltese government is just to increase the monthly active user count.

That's one of their main goals. Another main goal is to also make money. There are a few other main goals.

What do you mean by "just to increase"? Did they try to hide their goal? Was it a secret agenda nobody knows about?

These are some strange tautological comments.

materialpoint• 2 months ago

A company could get more profits from formally teaching employees the function of the Fn key on their laptops. It is staggering how most people, even among developers, don't know what it's for, and consequently, nearly everybody suffers from not being able to turn volume up or down, or accidentally disconnect from meetings by having turned on airplane mode.

netfortius• 2 months ago

Free data from citizens of a country, to feed the AI beast - who wouldn't want to be part of that? /s

chm024• 2 months ago

Some key data points, about Malta:

Malta is among Europe's leading adopters. The country ranks first for workplace AI usage and third overall for general AI adoption. Beyond AI, Malta also has one of the highest rates of social media usage in Europe.

This initiative is less about AI literacy or OpenAI and more reflective of the Malta government's policy of making technology accessible across all society.

It's not the first time either, in the early 2000s a similar partnership with Microsoft which provided heavily subsidized microsoft office licenses.

bwb• 2 months ago

How is press freedom in Malta? Was everyone ever held responsible for the car bombing of Daphne?

bazzmt• 2 months ago

Press freedom is absolutely not an issue. Certainly much much better than, say, the UK's where getting arrested for a tweet is common.

Regarding DCG's case: trial of the prime suspect due in July I believe. DCG's tragic case was a one-off. Attacks on democracy are much more common and frequent in other Western countries.

chm024• 2 months ago

I'm not sure what this has to do with AI but press freedom is poorer than most western European countries and the prosecution has left a lot to be desired. There are rumors of a trial happening later this year.

As a local the Daphne case has been a sore point and something which makes me very angry and sad. However it's not the only country with debatable press freedom. It's somewhat difficult to know that my country has been reduced to a single bad episode.

sdfhbdf• 2 months ago

Malta is also a very small country. It has a population of around 500,00 and area of around 310 km2. These are roughly the size of Atlanta, Georgia. It’s not hard to have a high adoption rate if your entire population is so small.

chm024• 2 months ago

Exactly. Which means this is less about adoption or literacy and more of a government handout.

HDBaseT4• 2 months ago

Why doesn't Atlanta or Georgia have high adoption rate then?

9dev2• 2 months ago

Curious how on every post about Malta, new accounts show up and post pro-Malta comments…

mmusc• 2 months ago

General elections are currently happening in Malta. This is purely a vote for us will give you stuff scheme....

qsera• 2 months ago

Bad idea..

pera• 2 months ago

I remember back in 2018 during peak crypto bubble the same class nick named Malta as the "Blockchain Island"

rvnx7• 2 months ago

Well it’s still the low-tax promise (non-dom status)

HDBaseT4• 2 months ago

Malta is a bit of a haven for all sorts of things.

Crypto, eSports, Gambling, VPNs, etc, all have deep roots in Malta because its easy, less taxed, less restricted and for the most part, people view Malta as a good place.

zombot• 2 months ago

Wow, a whole country to spy on, for free. Life as a tech oligarch must be sweet.

magenta4• 2 months ago

Shady companies do this so that people get locked into the product and then come to expect it. Then the companies suck the blood out of the local and national government for every cent.

trvz• 2 months ago

Too many people are stupid-stubborn and not even willing to pay 5$ a month for an online service that would help them greatly.

If a government thinks that ChatGPT even in its current form is a big boon, it makes sense to do this.

This is also insurance - your population gains LLM literacy and will have an advantage over other countries; even if it's only a tiny bit, at the level of states it adds up.

wartywhoa236• 2 months ago

Too many people are stupid-stubborn and not even willing to pay 5$ a month.

No, not gonna pay yet another tax, mr. Taxman.

jonplackett• 2 months ago

for one year

So it’s basically I giant government-sponsored free trial.

bekon• 2 months ago

Raping taxpayer with his own money is not Capitalism. Today I will remind you.

torginus2• 2 months ago

I am worried that a govt would encourage their own citizens to use a foreign service that uploads every professional and personal interactions to an AI companies servers, presumably to be trained on.

sschueller• 2 months ago

It's insane. They would be better of purchasing hardware and running deepseek locally.

At least the usage data would stay sovereign even if the model was trained somewhere else.

layer86• 2 months ago

OpenAI has to abide by the GDPR in the EU. The worry should be that US agencies can compel OpenAI to silently violate it.

torginus2• 2 months ago

Modelled after the Chinese curse, there should be be the European curse that reads "May the only thing that protects your private life be GDPR"

hleszek2• 2 months ago

I just completed the course and a big part of it was in fact to warn not to use it to send private data.

zkmon3• 2 months ago

I asked ChatGPT about corruption levels in Malta and whether the technology companies pay bribes to officials to get contracts. It was honest in its response and said Malta has serious corruption levels by EU standards.

That answers my wondering of why on earth all citizens require a paid service of chatGPT.

nsonha3• 2 months ago

why on earth all citizens require a paid service of chatGPT

If all citizens use ChatGPT as search engine instead of Google, their ability to access information and defend against fake news (as of right now) will be significantly improved and we only shift privacy concerns from Google to Open AI, which does seem like the lesser evil.

zkmon3• 2 months ago

ChatGPt is not a facts/news service. It's output is canned by it's system prompt. Infact it's cut-off dates far more into the past compared to other AI services. So the "news" it dishes could be outdated unless it decides search web, in which case it can't be better than google.

VortexLain• 2 months ago

This pretty much means OpenAI becomes a monopoly in Malta. Seems anti-competitive.

Ylpertnodi• 2 months ago

Politicians gotta politic.

gurjeet2• 2 months ago

I wanted to see how they'd ensure only a Maltese citizen can use it. It's gated behind something called eID.

Who can register: Maltese citizens and residents Must have an active eID account No previous AI knowledge is required

From https://mdia.gov.mt/services/ai-for-all-ai-ghal-kulhadd/

wartywhoa236• 2 months ago

Chain and shackle work in tandem.

kriro• 2 months ago

Seems like textbook Inside the Tornado marketing. Pick a country as a bowling pin, show some success, go for a different/bigger country. Presumably cover EU first this way. Be the first to offer all-citizens licenses.

CrzyLngPwd• 2 months ago

The first hit is always free.

wartywhoa236• 2 months ago

2030: OneOpenEye partners with One World Government to enforce mandatory usage of AI on worldizens and outlaw AI dodging.

bossyTeacher• 2 months ago

I wonder who is paying the bill for a nationwide OpenAI subscription. Is OpenAI doing this so they can show present (and potential) shareholders an increase in the number of users and ask for more money?

hansmayer• 2 months ago

So, they talked the government of Malta into picking up the tab for ChatShit-Generator ?

romanovcode• 2 months ago

Ugh, gives bad flashbacks of when Facebook did free access to all citizens in particular countries. Later only to harvest data and manipulate elections.

ulrischa• 2 months ago

I wished Germany would do something similar

tom1337• 2 months ago

I certainly hope our government is not doing anything similar. I don't want them to pay millions to a foreign company like OpenAI and basically kill competition with that.

tariky• 2 months ago

Can I register using VPN malta IP to get free plus?

hirako20002• 2 months ago

Probably, if you pass the soon to come age verification process, via some Apple or Google certified device.

hleszek2• 2 months ago

No, it works using Malta eID identification system which needs you to be a citizen or a resident.

hirako20002• 2 months ago

Is it just me or genAi is starting to look like a massive surveillance program?

On the taxpayer money.

If you force me to pay taxes, and you offer me free access to inference, I don't see why I would run my local, privacy-focus model.

nalekberov• 2 months ago

Not sure who is more corrupt these days: governments or big corporations.

What’s dangerous here is people will eventually stop thinking critically altogether, about anything, and their view of the world will be based on what they are shown on AI apps.

trilogic2• 2 months ago

Outrageous, Malta is Europe, it needs an European provider, this is an European security issue. Malta need to align to European values as by agreement with EU.

Andrex• 2 months ago

You're not going far enough.

Closed software has no place in government whatsoever. It should all be open and/or locally run, and ideally GPL/AGPL licensed.

It is another level of stupidity/moral failing to use closed software supplied from outside your nation, though.

trilogic2• 2 months ago

There is nothing money can´t buy, moral included. That do not change stupidity, so I am with you there.

chaitanyya• 2 months ago

This reminds me of the free internet Facebook tried to launch in India to kill net neutrality

Thank god people protested against it and made them drop the plan.

TomGarden• 2 months ago

Anyone else feel like they're going insane sometimes?

It's so simple, everyone on HN knows this, but I want to scream at every non-technical person "these tools are not reliable! You can't trust them!"

They are so useful but the failure modes need to be hammered into everyone at the very start of each onboarding.

It would be totally rational as a layperson to just ignore AI and just check in every few months to ask "is it reliable yet".

a3m_router_dev• 2 months ago

test content for HN

noIdeaTheSecond• 2 months ago

Is Malta a corrupt country?

HDBaseT4• 2 months ago

Moderately corrupt, slightly higher than the average nation.

OpenAI and Government of Malta partner to roll out ChatGPT Plus to all citizens

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