When countries have suffered the odd mishap regarding government paralysis or convulsive change, the frequent quip would often be: “Who noticed?” Much like university vice-chancellors or the parasitic management structures of most organisations, their forced absence merely induces a range of feelings from relief to indifference. They are all superfluous and know it. Reasons to justify their existence must therefore be invented.
With the introduction of artificial intelligence into various spheres of society, an assured sense of superfluousness is bound to get even more profound. Little wonder that AI technology is very modish in government circles, encouraging the Australian government, for example, to praise its “immense potential to improve social and economic wellbeing.” And seeing as government is very often a multiplication of the irrelevant, the hopeless and the spurious, it only follows that AI would be praised for improving it. “For government,” the Australian AI policy goes on to explain, “the benefits of adopting AI include more efficient and accurate agency operations, better data analysis and evidence-based decisions, and improved service delivery for people and business.”
Little in the way of justice, human rights, or equity is mentioned in this glowing praise, which is often the problem with the next fad that captures those supposedly running a country. Efficiency chatter rarely features the welfare of the human. This has not deterred the introduction of machine learning to forecast inflation in the eurozone, or the US Federal Reserve from pursuing research using generative models to digest the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee. The Reserve Bank of Australia has decided that policy briefings might well best be done by AI, though its governor Michele Bullock tried to reassure the public in a lecture delivered this month that “we are not using AI to formulate or set monetary policy or any other policy.” Then again, in economics, who would know?
One country with its abundant share of administrative problems and reputational issues is Albania, Europe’s fifth poorest state. While its citizens are a resourceful bunch, its government has tended to wallow in the mire of corruption, a consistent handicap in its efforts to join the European Union. And as every problem these days calls out for the AI panacea, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has decided to join the club in dramatic fashion. Rather than focusing on solutions that would presumably draw on people, insight and experience, Rama thinks that appointing the world’s first AI minister is the way to go. Less messy, less problematic. Fewer people to blame.
The AI minister, named Diella (“sun” in Albanian), had already made an appearance as a virtual assistant to the e-Albania public service platform. From that debut, the bot was intended to assist users navigate the system to obtain official documents. Few thought that this was a prelude to careerism. Now, this same artificial creature has the status of a cabinet minister with various responsibilities. “Diella is the first cabinet minister who isn’t physically present, but is virtually created by AI,” says Rama.
Leaving aside the issue of mental presence, Rama hopes that Diella will make his country one “where public tenders are 100 percent free of corruption” with the process being totally transparent. He is less than flattering about the ministries of government, long blighted by corruption. How clever, then, to leave it to Diella to be “the public servant of procurement”. Importantly, she is bound to be safe, unlikely to vie for leadership of the country (at least for the moment), unlikely to leak to the press, and unlikely to cause those distracting scandals that terrify government ministers. As a BBC report caustically remarks, “She will only be power-hungry in the sense of the electricity she consumes. And a damaging expenses scandal would appear to be out of the question.”
Certain lawmakers are unimpressed. “[The] Prime Minister’s buffoonery cannot be turned into legal acts of the Albanian state,” huffed Gazmend Bardhi, parliamentary group leader of the Democrats. There certainly is that touchy problem of the Albanian constitution, which makes it clear that government ministers must be mentally competent citizens that have, at the very least, reached the age of 18.
It is hard to avoid the accusation that Rama is merely peeing in the wind, splashing everybody with ample, sloshing nonsense. Impoverished states are often in the habit of seeking technological wonders to outdo their supposedly more advanced counterparts, leaving the structural rot unattended. The Albanian PM, in a similar vein, sees his country “leapfrogging” other states, trapped by “traditional ways of working.” His seductive hook has certainly caught a few, including Aneida Bajraktari Bicja, founder of the financial services company Balkans Capital. Having an AI cabinet appointment “could be constructive if it develops into real systems that improve transparency and trust in public procurement”.
Rama is boisterously confident that he can deliver EU membership for Albania in five years, with negotiations concluding by 2027. By then, he may well be leaving the entire negotiation process to AI, relinquishing human agency in all its forms. That would say much about the level of talent of those involved in the process, including those tolerating it.
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