Albania appoints ‘world’s first’ AI government minister
AI minister ‘Diella’ to oversee public tenders, an area long plagued by corruption in Albania
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Thursday he had appointed the world’s first AI-generated government minister to oversee public tenders, promising its artificial intelligence would make it “corruption-free”.
Presenting his new cabinet at a meeting of his Socialist Party following a big May election victory, Rama introduced the new “member”, named “Diella” - “sun” in Albanian.
“Diella is the first (government) member who is not physically present, but virtually created by artificial intelligence,” Rama said.
Diella will be entrusted with all decisions on public tenders, making them “100 per cent corruption-free and every public fund submitted to the tender procedure will be perfectly transparent”, he added.
The awarding of such contracts has long been a source of corruption scandals in Albania, a Balkan country that experts say is a hub for gangs seeking to launder their money from trafficking drugs and weapons across the world, and where corruption has reached the corridors of power.
The government did not provide details of what human oversight there might be for Diella, or address risks that someone could manipulate the artificial intelligence bot.