This sounds generous in the way that free candy sounds generous. Sure, you get candy. But you’re also being trained to show up, reach for it, and build a habit around whatever is in that bowl.
The news going around is that Malta is apparently giving every citizen free access to ChatGPT for one year. Not a discount. Not “free for students.” Everyone. On paper, that’s the kind of public move that makes other countries look slow and stingy. Why shouldn’t a government help people get access to a tool that can explain things, translate, draft letters, and make boring admin tasks less painful?
But I don’t think this is mainly about kindness or “digital inclusion.” I think it’s about adoption. And adoption is power.
If you can get an entire country to use one assistant as their default “thinking tool” for a year, you don’t just hand out a product. You shape habits. You nudge what people trust. You quietly decide what becomes normal. And the part people are skipping over is that “free” is a strategy, not a gift.
Here’s the best version of this idea, because it exists. Imagine you’re a Maltese citizen who struggles with English paperwork. Suddenly you can draft a complaint to a landlord, rewrite a job application, or understand a medical form without begging a friend for help. A small business owner can write a simple website page. A parent can get help making sense of school messages. A student can study with a tutor that doesn’t get tired. If the access is real and the experience is smooth, it’s hard to argue against the value. It could genuinely lower friction in daily life.
But then comes the messy part: what exactly are we encouraging people to pour into this tool?
Because people don’t treat a chat assistant like a library book. They treat it like a confidant. They paste in personal stories. They ask about health symptoms. They share work problems. They drop in emails, documents, drafts, and private context without thinking twice. It’s not because they’re careless. It’s because the interface trains you to be casual. It feels like talking, not “uploading.”
So yes, “probably to get more data” is a reasonable suspicion, even if the details aren’t public. Whether the goal is data, market presence, political bragging rights, or just being first, the outcome is the same: a whole population gets pushed down one path. And once people depend on a tool, it’s very hard to unwind that dependence later.
Let’s say you’re a government worker and you start using it to draft replies. Faster, cleaner, less stress. Your boss loves the speed. The office quietly starts expecting the speed. Now you’re not using the tool because it’s fun; you’re using it because the workflow has changed. At the end of the year, when “free” ends, who eats the cost? The worker? The department? The taxpayer? Or does the government renew because it can’t afford the backlash of taking it away?
That’s the hook: free for one year creates a problem that only continued payment solves.
There’s also the question of what happens to local alternatives. If there are smaller tools, local language projects, or homegrown tech teams trying to build something similar, this kind of deal can crush them. Not because they’re bad, but because they can’t compete with free. A country can accidentally decide, in one shiny announcement, that the default brain-on-demand will come from outside, and local innovation can stay a hobby.
Some people will say I’m being paranoid. They’ll argue this is no different from a government giving citizens free software or free internet access. Fair point—public access programs can be great. The difference is that this isn’t just a tool like a spreadsheet. It’s a system people use to think, write, argue, and decide. When you centralize that, you’re centralizing influence. Even if no one intends to misuse it, the incentives are obvious: steer usage, measure behavior, lock in dependence, and call it progress.
And even if you ignore privacy and power, there’s a softer risk: people leaning on it too hard. Imagine a teenager using it to write essays and slowly losing the muscle to struggle through messy thinking. Or a stressed parent using it for parenting advice and getting confident-sounding answers that don’t fit their kid. Or someone asking for legal or health guidance and taking it too seriously because it “sounds smart.” If a government helps roll this out, it also carries some responsibility for the harm when people misunderstand what the tool is.
I also can’t tell from what’s been shared publicly what the guardrails are. Are citizens warned clearly about what not to share? Are there limits for kids? Is there an option to use it without their chats being stored? What happens in public schools? What happens in government offices? “Free access” without clear rules is basically an invitation for the most vulnerable people to overshare.
Malta might be trying to be bold and modern, and part of me respects the nerve. But bold isn’t the same as wise. A one-year free offer can be a bridge to literacy and opportunity, or it can be a very clever way to get a whole country hooked on one company’s brain.
If you were making this decision for your own country, what would you demand be true—about privacy, choice, and long-term cost—before you’d call it a good idea?