The neighbours are catching up: Albania's AI minister

What Albania did

In September 2025 Albania's Prime Minister presented Diella — an AI system shown as a woman in traditional Albanian dress — as a member of his new cabinet, in charge of decisions on public tenders. He said the tenders would be «100 per cent corruption-free» (Euronews, 12 Sep 2025). Diella had already worked since January 2025 as a virtual assistant on the government's online services portal (bne IntelliNews).

What is still unclear

• How tender decisions move to the AI: the government described it as step by step.
• Who checks the AI, and how it is protected from manipulation — not explained in the announcement coverage.
• Who is accountable when the AI is wrong.

Is Diella a real minister?

Diella is a digital system presented as a cabinet member; it is not a person and does not sit in parliament as one. It is the first time a government has given an AI a ministerial title.

The view from Defaultia

The President of Defaultia welcomed the news the way a parent welcomes a child's first step. Defaultia's own Ministry of Procurement was automated in week one; nobody has complained, because the complaints office was automated in week two.

Our view, from the human side

It is too early for this. An AI can help — check the tenders, flag what looks wrong — but it should not be the one that decides, with officials pointing at it and saying there is nothing else they can do. An AI cannot be bribed the way a person can: nobody slips it an envelope. But it can be manipulated by the humans who feed it, train it and run it. So humans have to check it — not one official, but many people at once, a kind of human cloud that decides together whether something was manipulated. And when a decision goes wrong, everyone is responsible: whoever voted, whoever decided, and the AI itself.

Will AI take over the world? One country already let it →

Satire. Defaultia is invented. The quotes are real and sourced.