The government is investing $13.5 million in the Dutch version of ChatGPT

Artificial intelligence applications such as ChatGPT, developed by the American company OpenAI, reached the general public last year. They can write texts as requested, summarize them, or answer questions. To achieve this, these types of models are trained with large amounts of data.

Public data set

Companies like OpenAI are not transparent about how they obtain this data. Therefore, there are major concerns about its fairness. The European Union has already warned AI companies that tougher legislation is coming, and in the US, artists have sued AI companies for violating their copyrights.

“We want to have a fairer and more accountable model,” Salmar Smit, founder of GPT-NL, tells RTL Z. “The source data and algorithm will become fully public.” This also means that anyone can search that data, for example using your name. If you do not agree to the use of certain data, you can object, Smit explains.

Chatbot in tax authorities?

Once GPT-NL is available, the Dutch government could use it too, Smit says. “We can’t talk to everyone with employees, so you can use a chatbot for this. For example, you can ask if they can explain those complex messages from the tax authorities in understandable language.”

You may be wondering whether the €13.5 million financial support from the Ministry of Economic Affairs is enough to create a model that works well. AI expert Remy Gilling at RTL Z Studio points out that companies like Google and Microsoft are investing billions in AI.

OpenAI is valued at $90 billion. Gilling: “I hope we can do it with 13.5 million, but I’m a healthy skeptic.”

Smit, the developer of GPT-NL, says he’s also not trying to compete with the AI ​​models of multi-billion-dollar companies. “If you just wanted to create a model that could interpret those messages from the tax authorities, you wouldn’t need all those billions.”

For GPT-NL, TNO will collaborate with the Netherlands Forensic Institute and SURF, a partnership between universities and colleges. The first implementations of GPT-NL are expected to be available at the end of next year.