Photo courtesy of Arab News
In September, the southeast European country of Albania appointed an AI system as its “Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence.” Diella, displayed as a traditionally dressed woman, assured the outraged opposition that she had no intentions of furthering the corruption that has characterized the Albanian government since its attempts to democratize in the early nineties.
“Some have labeled me unconstitutional because I am not a human being,” the chatbot recounted to parliament in a response video displayed across two large screens in the room. “That hurt me.”
“The Constitution speaks of institutions at the people’s service. It doesn’t speak of chromosomes, of flesh or blood,” the avatar contended, “it speaks of duties, accountability, transparency, non-discriminatory service … [and] I assure you that I embody such values as strictly as every human colleague, maybe even more.”
Prime Minister Edi Rama echoed Diella’s statement, asserting that, when it comes to quelling rampant corruption, no human can rival the capabilities of an AI program.
“Diella never sleeps, she doesn't need to be paid, she has no personal interests, she has no cousins—because cousins are a big issue in Albania …" Rama explained.
While Albania may be the first country to use AI in such a blatantly obvious way (likely as part of an effort to obtain membership into the European Union by 2030), many countries, including the United States, have also been using AI at increasing rates.
According to a July report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the use of generative AI by government officials increased ninefold from 2023 to 2024. Recently, the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) used the software to comb through over 100,000 federal regulations and flag those it determined should be removed.
Assistant professor for political science, Dr. Philip Bunn, is concerned that AI’s use in government is “short-circuting” certain norms that make a country democratic.
“It’s an issue of accountability, partially,” Bunn says, “but it’s also just an issue of how we as humans interact socially … We prize so highly at least the idea of consent and input into the system … AI seems to shortcut or undercut that input.”
“The assumption that we make when we enter into professional relationships is that we can hold the people we are interacting with accountable to the decisions that they make,” Bunn elaborates, “We can ask the tool why it's making these decisions … but what it’s telling you why it’s making those decisions is not exactly the same as why it's making these decisions.”
While there are completely legitimate uses for the technology—increased efficiency, organization and data-supported policy creation, to name a few—Bunn, along with many others, believe that those who value “little ‘d’ democracy” should be wary of unrestricted AI use by our elected representatives, balancing uses of AI “that are actually useful and efficient” with the “normative things that we care about like legitimacy and consent.”
Thumbnail courtesy of Arab News.