Albania’s AI minister is ‘pregnant’ with 83 digital assistants, prime minister says

Albania’s first non-human minister made up entirely by artificial intelligence (AI) is “pregnant” with 83 children that will become parliamentary assistants, according to the country’s prime minister.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama toldthe Global Dialogue Forum in Berlin that the parliamentary assistants will participate in parliamentary sessions, keep notes on what goes on and then give advice to members on how they should react to specific pieces of legislation.

“These children will have their mother’s knowledge regarding EU legislation and everything else,” Rama said.

“This child will say what was said when [the member] is not in the hall and if [the member’s] name was mentioned and [they] have to counterattack someone who mentioned you for the wrong reasons,” he added.

In January, Albania started using a digital AI assistant named Diella, meaning Sun in Albanian, to advise people how to navigate government services online. By September, Rama announced that Diella was joining his cabinet as the first digital minister.

As part of Diella’s mandate, the AI minister is entrusted with all decisions on public tenders, which will make them “100 per cent corruption-free,” Rama said in September.

Diella also addressed the summit in Berlin, saying that she hopes the world can learn that “artificial intelligence, when rooted in democratic values and cultural identity, can strengthen not weaken human leadership”.

She said that she and her children will not be replacing civil servants but that they will “amplify their capacity to serve” by helping them make decisions with data and to do repetitive tasks for them.