How Chat-GPT Decides a Nation’s Future

You are probably not unfamiliar with the functions of Chat-GPT. It could be suspected that it’s a clear minority of the world’s sleep-deprived university students who haven’t fallen victim to its allure. Promoted by its developers as a tool for further human intellectual evolution, professors and a vast majority of intellectuals still approach the subject with extreme caution.

“It’s unreliable”, they say. “It doesn’t check sources”. And sure there is a lot to these concerns. GPT, despite its abilities, cannot be said to live up to the watchful eye of an academic method. That is why, no-one suggests using it as a reliable way of writing a dissertation. Considering all this, how can professor’s advice be relied upon, when it was revealed in 2023, that the Albanian government is using Chat-GPT to enter the EU? 

The EU membership process has been known to be gruelingly long and boring. As stated in the Copenhagen criteria of 1993, it is defined how the accession process is to be planned for potential new EU members. These criteria include political, economic, and legal screenings to assess a country’s readiness for membership. The process involves three stages: potential candidate status, candidate status, and membership negotiations. To proceed from potential candidate to candidate status, the DGN-NEAR agency must confirm that the country meets the Copenhagen criteria. Over the years, the process has often been criticized by candidate countries for being overly bureaucratic. Meanwhile, EU member states view it as necessary to ensure candidates meet EU standards.

Albania has been stuck in this process since 2009. It gained candidate status in 2014 and since September 2024 Albania has opened the first chapter of membership negotiations with the EU. So what is the problem? Albania seems to be well on its way into the European family. But if European politics teaches anything it is that things aren’t simple.

Albania has opened the first chapter of the acquis: free movement of goods. This means that they have 34 more chapters to close, and with each chapter, follows a long process of lawyers and translators working to unite Albanian law with EU law. It is here that the Albanian government announced in September 2023 that it would be using Chat-GPT to accelerate the process, marking an early entry of the AI system into the public sector.

The Albanian government hopes not only to accelerate the membership process but also to cut costs on lawyers and translators necessary for closing the first chapter. The use of Chat-GPT might not come as a surprise for those who follow the flamboyant Prime Minister Edi Rama’s enthusiastic strategy for an Albanian entry in 2028. He has himself been outspokenly critical of the EU’s handling of his, as well as the accession processes of the entire Balkan. 

But why Chat-GPT? As it turns out, the American AI system has some Albanian within it. Mira Muratih was the engineering chief at OpenAI and was born in Albania. Not only is the use of Chat-GPT a tool to reduce cost and live up to the political dream of quick ascension, but it might even be a sign of true Albanian patriotism to use the model, as a testament to the influence the country has had in recent years. 

Despite the positive, it is hard not to overlook the obvious. As the concerns of professors scream out, the system is unreliable and mistakes might still lead to serious errors in the accession process. The Albanian government has stressed that it is using human lawyers and translators to monitor the use of AI. However, the question remains whether it helps in the end. Albania has issues with organized crime and corruption, which still limits the country’s status as fully democratic. Despite the AI’s ability to make the paperwork faster, the actual problems holding Albania’s accession back are not computationally solvable. 

The Albanian case might be a sign of things to come. How AI as a tool is now entering the public sector and as such, furthers the discussion of how it should be implemented and used. The case also opens up perspectives on the EU’s current accession process. Is it too convoluted, or does it need to be, to warn of potential troublemakers? There is no good answer that might encapsulate all the problems and solutions the case brings. However, without a doubt, AI is changing politics – for good and bad.