OpenAI and Government of Malta partner to roll out ChatGPT Plus to all citizens (openai.com)
108 points by bookofjoe 8 hours ago
hbarka 13 minutes ago
Next, maybe Anthropic can make Sicily an offer it can’t refuse.
sharpshadow 40 minutes ago
It’s a voluntary two hour online AI course with 1 year ChatGPT premium reward. Getting AI basics to the people with playground.
sidcool an hour ago
All that data on all Malta citizens. Remember, if you're more paying, you're the product
pear01 8 minutes ago
They don't care. Come up with a better argument. Consumers and citizens by the billions the world over have already told you they don't care. Why would you think Malta of all places would be an exception?
zamadatix 21 minutes ago
Remember, if the government says it's free it almost certainly means the people are actually paying for it.
EGreg 7 minutes 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.
decimalenough 7 hours ago
It's a one year free trial, after that it costs money.
Sophira 2 hours ago
And only after a mandatory course, if I'm reading the article correctly.
alpinisme 2 hours 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
exabrial an hour ago
Gosh how generous of malta government officials to transfer those tax earnings straight to the 1%ers pockets
627467 4 hours ago
Openai seems to be fast forwarding the original Facebook playbook: lobbying for regulatory moat and now OpenAI zero[0]
zitterbewegung 7 hours 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.
Yokohiii 7 minutes ago
What has this to do with AI literacy?
purrcat259 7 hours 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 hours 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.
rileymat2 25 minutes ago
IncreasePosts an hour ago
preisschild 7 hours 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 an hour ago
>You don't let tobacco companies make anti smoking education either.
Many jurisdictions literally force them to put education on the boxes.
zamadatix 16 minutes ago
blfr 7 hours 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
gwerbin 7 hours 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.
loloquwowndueo 3 hours ago
First step of enshittification :)
weird-eye-issue 3 hours 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 8 minutes ago
It does come with a discount for YouTube Premium.
dwa3592 7 hours ago
Thank you for this comment and holy cow, I have the pro subscription and didn't know it came with that many bells.
pishpash 2 hours 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.
conradev 3 hours ago
The government does subsidize basic banking, though?
ecommerceguy 7 hours ago
I had a free 3 month trial I just terminated. I deemed it too expensive.
loloquwowndueo 3 hours ago
Free is too expensive? Were you expecting to get paid for using it?
esafak 3 hours ago
martinbfine an hour 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!
rendx 7 hours 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."*
dawnerd 7 hours ago
Gotta get them hooked and reliant on it. It’s why they subsidized the entire software industry to adopt it.
34df 2 hours ago
OAI really believes LLMs are going to have the same revolutionary effect as personal computers did.... lmao.
beering 39 minutes ago
julianlam 7 hours ago
> for one year
snort
varispeed 7 hours 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?
applfanboysbgon 7 hours 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.
phillc73 7 hours 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?
Aurornis 3 hours ago
beering 35 minutes ago
fock 3 hours ago
applfanboysbgon 7 hours ago
morkalork 7 hours ago
Worse than that, it's bi-directional. The model's responses and tuning now influences a whole nation of people.
netsharc 3 hours 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...
ninjahawk1 7 hours 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 7 hours 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?
malfist 7 hours ago
Is the electricity or natural gas that your body produces a defining feature of humanity?
Does AI actually provide intelligence?
raq98 7 hours 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?
archagon 5 hours ago
kovek 2 hours ago
LLMs are like a search engine that autocompletes. It's a tool.
pizza 7 hours ago
you can say the same thing of the watts in a person too
Muromec 7 hours 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
34df 2 hours ago
None of those things qualify as intelligence.
Is a calculator intelligent? I can 'talk' to it via pushing buttons.
malfist 7 hours ago
Is a dictionary intelligent?
hilariously 7 hours ago
Muromec 7 hours ago
preisschild 7 hours 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...
Muromec 7 hours ago
martin-t 6 hours 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.
delusional 7 hours ago
> providing intelligence as a utility
Lol, they are literally just promising to make people fungible. Tale as old as time.
martin-t 6 hours 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.
rtlambh 7 hours 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.
Muromec 7 hours ago
Eyball scans are already there on the border for other people. So are AI turrets shooting people on sight, just a different border
purrcat259 7 hours ago
Unfortunate thats the reputation we have :(
eska 7 hours 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.
syngrog66 7 hours 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.)
purrcat259 7 hours ago
Citation needed. I haven't heard of this.
I'm Maltese so feel free to be as detailed as needed.
collingreen 7 hours 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.
purrcat259 7 hours ago
mock-possum 7 hours ago
Smart move, just wish a more ethical outfit was making it.
neon_me 7 hours ago
... rather than that, they should prepay everyone a few hours of therapy and aroma sticks. A waaay more profit in the long game.
musicale 7 hours ago
What could possibly go wrong?
sauercrowd 7 hours ago
TL;DR: they made a course for citizens
jijji 39 minutes ago
so they get a course on how not to use AI? hopefully it doesnt include all the woke guardrails that Google uses, the people of Malta might be in for a rude awaking: "can men get pregnant?" oh yes they can... lol
alfiedotwtf 7 hours 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
GaggiX 7 hours ago
I'm not Maltese and I did find it interesting.
muwtyhg 5 hours ago
Could you articulate what part you find interesting?
ipaddr 3 hours ago
GaggiX 3 hours ago
cj 3 hours ago
irishcoffee 31 minutes 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.
MagicMoonlight 7 hours ago
It’s a shame ChatGPT is total trash now.
Muromec 7 hours ago
Thanks CCP for having providing one that is as lying and flattering but cheaper.
1295817 6 hours 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 hours 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.