TIRANA, November 21/ATA/- Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted today to an opinion essay of the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the “New York Times” arguing against governments handing over decision-making to AI.
PM Rama defended Albania’s use of an AI minister to fight corruption.
Rama argued that he is disappointed with Schmidt’s opinion highlighting that, “Albania is the first country to take a real step towards ‘algocracy’: governance by algorithm”.
The head of the government wrote in subsequent Times articles that Diella is neither a ruler, nor a substitute for democracy, but “a public guardian conceived to make democracy function better and public services faster, fairer and more transparent.”
“I hold Mr. Schmidt in high estimation. His leadership at Google and his ideas about the relationship between technology and society have inspired a generation of policymakers, including me. But, in the quality of Albania’s prime minister, I was disappointed to read his description of Diella, Albania’s A.I. governance initiative, as “a step toward ‘algocracy’: governance by algorithms.”
Diella is neither a ruler nor a substitute for democracy. It is a digital civil servant, a public watchdog designed to make democracy work better and public services faster, fairer, and more transparent.
For decades, Albania, like many new democracies, has struggled against corruption in public procurement. When the rules are broken, it is not the algorithms that fail, but the people.
Diella is built to enforce existing laws and procedures impartially and without political influence. The values it upholds — fairness, transparency, efficiency — are not mathematical abstractions; they are democratic principles, codified and fully auditable.
With Diella, every decision is traceable, reasonable and open to appeal. This is not “governance by algorithm”. It is governance by law, enforced by technology, under the watchful eye of the citizens.
Albania’s goal is not to hand power over to machines, but to free people from inefficiency and temptation. We are not building an algocracy in Albania. We are building a digital democracy,” Rama stated in his article for “The New York Times”. /TCH/p.s./
