Diella, the first Albanian AI minister. What is the best case scenario and What can go wrong?
Albania just made headlines. The government has appointed an AI avatar, Diella, as a virtual cabinet minister in charge of public procurement. The goal is ambitious: eliminate corruption, speed up tenders, increase transparency.
What is Diella and the promise
Introduced in January 2025 as a virtual assistant on Albania’s e-Albania platform, Diella helps citizens navigate services, request official documents, etc.
As of September 2025, Diella has been elevated to “Minister for Public Procurement” under Prime Minister Edi Rama’s cabinet.
The government claims that Diella will make public tenders “100% free of corruption,” by removing human bias, political interference, and opaque decision-making in procurement.
What is the Best case Scenario?
In the best-case scenario, Diella becomes more than a headline, she can transforms public procurement into one of the cleanest and most transparent processes in government. By publishing bids, criteria, and outcomes in real time, she makes favoritism and backroom deals nearly impossible.
If successful, Diella could inspire other nations to adopt similar AI-driven oversight roles, positioning Albania as a global case study in digital governance. Done responsibly, with humans overseeing AI decisions, the model balances efficiency with accountability. The result: corruption is reduced, efficiency is improved, and citizens gain confidence in their institutions. In this optimistic future, Diella is not just an experiment but a blueprint for how governments worldwide can use technology to strengthen democracy.
What might break Diella and what can go wrong
Well, many things, but let's try to list some technical and non-technical.
Errors, adversarial manipulation, hacking
Models (if this is an AI-model like those from OpenAI or similar) may make mistakes, misunderstand tenders, misinterpret criteria. Also security risks: adversarial inputs, data poisoning, or hacking could compromise fairness or confidentiality.
Mistakes could cost public money or unfairly disqualify legitimate bidders. Security failure could leak sensitive data or allow tampering with outcomes. Loss of public trust.
Accountability and oversight
Even if Diella does the decision-making, oversight is crucial: humans need to monitor, audit, correct. Without robust mechanisms (external audits, public records, appeals), there's risk that Diella becomes a screen behind which real-world actors still influence decisions.
Accountability may weaken rather than strengthen. Corruption may hide behind the technology. Citizens may lose grounds to challenge decisions or seek recourse. Misuse or errors may go uncorrected.
Lack of transparency in how Diella makes decisions
If Diella uses proprietary or opaque algorithms (black-box models), it will be very hard for citizens, oversight bodies or courts to verify why a certain contractor won a bid or was rejected. Without clarity on decision logic, unfairness or bias can creep in.
Corruption or nepotism may simply be hidden rather than eliminated. Legal challenges could arise. Loss of trust. If EU accession demands require auditability of decision-making, this could become a stumbling block.
Thank you for reading - Arjus