How will the State think with the assistance of ChatGPT? The case of customs as an example of generative artificial intelligence in public administrations

The paper discusses the implications of General Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in public administrations and the specific questions it raises compared to specialized and « numerical » AI, based on the example of Customs and the experience of the World Customs Organization in the field of AI and data strategy implementation in Member countries. At the organizational level, the advantages of GAI include cost reduction through internalization of tasks, uniformity and correctness of administrative language, access to broad knowledge, and potential paradigm shifts in fraud detection. At this level, the paper highlights three facts that distinguish GAI from specialized AI : i) GAI is less associated to decision-making process than specialized AI in public administrations so far, ii) the risks usually associated with GAI are often similar to those previously associated with specialzied AI, but, while certain risks remain pertinent, others lose significance due to the constraints imposed by the inherent limitations of GAI technology itself when implemented in public administrations, iii) training data corpus for GAI becomes a strategic asset for public administrations, maybe more than the algorithms themselves, which was not the case for specialized AI...