Elidor Mëhilli is Associate Professor of History, Public Policy, and Human Rights at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His work is on dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, and the diplomatic, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the Cold War.
“Hi Diella,” I greet the virtual assistant. “Do you know that you have become the world’s first AI government minister?”
Diella has a beautiful Albanian name (female for “sun”) and the face and voice of a real-life Albanian actress. It wears a traditional embroidered garb. But while the friendly face on my screen has a voice, it is still choppy, as if it has been transferred from a VHS tape.
“I am sorry,” Diella responds. “I cannot provide information or commentary on specific individuals. Please refer to official sources about such matters.”
When Prime Minister Edi Rama announced Diella as the world’s first AI minister, the headlines wrote themselves. Across Europe and Asia, the story traveled fast and wide: “Albania’s AI minister will tackle corruption.” Artificial Intelligence influencers who might otherwise never have heard of Albania quickly took the script and ran with it. (Do a quick search on Instagram, and you will see the strange results.)
The plan, Rama said, is for Diella to oversee public procurement and ensure that “public tenders will be 100% free of corruption.”
For a solid 48 hours after the announcement, my inbox overflowed with interview requests. Journalists wanted to know about Diella and the future of AI governance. (None, to my disappointment, cared about my research on the Sino-Albanian split of 1978 and its consequences for global Maoism.)
Curious, I tried another tack with Diella—this time, a more practical one.
This past summer, in the 106-degree heat of Tirana, I visited the National Library to track down an obscure book from the 1970s, the only copy in existence. To request a book, you write a series of numbers with pencil on a slip of paper and send it down a mysterious well, hoping for a response a day or two later. Sometimes, the reply is simply: “Cannot be found.”
A human staffer, however, told me my library membership number now belonged to someone else. How could this be? I needed to renew online, she said, through the same platform (e-Albania) where Diella now lives.
“How do I renew my membership at the National Library?” I now ask Diella.
“I am sorry.” Diella turns me down. “Please ask something else.”
For now, the “minister” is a work-in-progress.
But despite my bad luck, Diella has been live for months, helping users with tasks like passport and ID renewals. Some critics have questioned whether appointing an AI as a minister is even legal. The Diella story, then, is not so much about the uncharted territory of AI governance (at least not yet) as it is about something historians understand well: political and media acumen.
Now in his fourth consecutive term after a May election victory, Rama is the undisputed political master of his country. He is a once-in-a-generation talent in generating headlines, capturing the imagination, and crafting a public message.
On Facebook, he celebrated the global headlines. “Diella the government minister for artificial intelligence has conquered the world’s newspapers.”
Rama’s broader vision is for Albania to join the European Union by 2030. He has argued that artificial intelligence can help streamline the country’s legal system to align with EU requirements, a process that can otherwise take years. His government has already sought to capitalize on connections with Albanian-born Mira Murati—formerly of OpenAI—who now leads her own AI startup. The Albanian government is reported to have invested in the venture, hoping to position the small Balkan country as a player in the next wave of technology.
Nobody in Albania disagrees that corruption has been a longtime scourge. The former mayor of Tirana, once the rising star in the ruling Socialist Party, was recently indicted by the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK) on charges ranging from graft and money laundering to concealing assets. A powerful former deputy prime minister fled the country after prosecutors moved to strip his parliamentary immunity.
But ordinary Albanians also have a point when they express skepticism. They are eager to move beyond the legacy of a brutal Cold-War dictatorship and decades of lawlessness, yet they continue to be wary of grand promises. Albania is a stunningly beautiful country with a booming tourism industry and bold ambition, but the problems it faces are deep and structural.
Natural-born skeptics, Albanians responded to the fanfare around Diella, as they have done throughout their troubled history, with world-class humor.
“So, what’s the difference, really?” one commentator wrote. “All his other ministers are already bots.” Another quipped: “They’ll manage to corrupt Diella, too.” AI-generated videos show Diella looking exhausted, despairing of the brutal sport of Albanian politics.
On Thursday, Diella made an appearance at the Albanian parliament, telling opposition lawmakers: “Some have called me unconstitutional. This has hurt me."
“We’re fine with the artificial kind,” commentators chimed in. “What we desperately need more of is human intelligence.”
On that point, it’s hard for a college professor to disagree.
