The announcement that Malta’s 2026 Budget will offer a free ChatGPT subscription to citizens who complete an AI course has caught the public’s imagination. It’s well-intentioned, but it feels reactive. A free licence does not build a competitive nation. It builds curiosity, not capability.

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If we truly believe in AI as a national growth engine, we must move beyond distribution and into transformation. That means rethinking education, capital availability and governance.

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Learning that lasts

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A free AI licence gives access in the way that previous national schemes provided access to laptops or tablets… but access without understanding risks superficial use. What Malta needs is a deep AI literacy programme; a generation that knows why models behave as they do, not only how to prompt them. Imagine: every student with a personalised AI tutor aligned to their syllabus empowering teachers to focus on creativity and reasoning. That’s the real digital dividend.

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We must also recognise that AI is not merely another tool but a force shaping our social fabric. If we do not actively shape its trajectory, we risk being shaped by it. Education must teach students not just to use AI tools, but to thrive alongside them, equipping them with the ability to question, synthesise and adapt over time. And underpinning this must be a new social contract for the AI era: one where technology amplifies human potential, safeguards values and distributes benefits fairly.

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From skills to capital

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Technology ecosystems do not thrive on skills alone. They require risk capital, the kind of investment Mario Draghi emphasised Europe still lacks. Released in September 2024, his report calls for urgent action to boost the EU’s economic standing against rivals like the United States and China, especially in areas like AI investment.

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According to the European Commission’s 2025 Innovation Scoreboard, Malta’s venture-capital expenditures are only around 5.8 % of the EU average (ranking us last in the pack). Direct and indirect government support for business R&D also falls to the lowest level among all EU Member States. 

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In this light, the proposed budgetary allocation of €100 million for SMEs adopting technology is useful, but it addresses adoption, not creation. Risk capital (through supported venture funds) is distinct: its job is to back R&D, new product creation, scale and exports. Without it, Malta risks remaining a nation of pilots, not products.

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If all the local capital stays locked into real-estate rather than high-growth start-ups, you end up with an economy that lacks high-value exportable innovations, rather than a thriving AI sector. As an entrepreneur in AI, that’s a concern, because the leap from adoption to creation requires capital, willingness to fail, and the formation of a deep-tech ecosystem, not just tool distribution.

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The public sector must lead, not follow

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Government is Malta’s largest buyer of technology and therefore its most powerful signal-setter. If it adopts AI intelligently across core services such as healthcare waiting list validation, citizen demand automation, permit processing or justice administration, it can redefine what modern governance looks like.

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AI must be treated not as a peripheral experiment but as the new national infrastructure… as essential to future productivity as roads and bridges were to industrial growth. Nations that fail to build digital infrastructure today will face the same bottlenecks tomorrow that others once faced without ports or electricity.

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To succeed, implementation must be ethical and transparent. Government should consult domain experts, publish clear frameworks for algorithmic accountability, and ensure auditability and explainability in every system it deploys. Responsible automation can reduce cost and delay, but equally important, it can rebuild public trust in institutions.

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When the public sector leads by example it sends a stronger signal of innovation than any campaign or incentive ever could.

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A broader foundation

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Competitiveness in AI will rest on people, data, and compute (which itself is dependant on access to silicon chips and a robust power-grid that can meet the demands of scaleable processing). 

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A free licence can still play its part, but only if it becomes the start of a structured journey, not its conclusion. Every citizen who completes the course should graduate into more than a token licence, they should graduate into possibility. Into awareness of new career paths, into the courage to build start-ups, into the curiosity to experiment and lead. The programme should not end with access to a tool, but begin with the formation of builders: people equipped to create value, take risks and shape the industries that AI will transform.

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AI readiness is not achieved by handing out subscriptions. It is achieved by nurturing systems, human, financial, and institutional that learn and evolve.

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If Malta wishes to lead, it must not only use AI.

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It must learn to think with it.