A Sermon in the Desert

Mr. President, distinguished representatives of the peoples who have not yet emigrated,

My turn has come again to preach in this desert where we gather every September. I love this hall very much. In Tirana, when I speak, people either applaud, or take the road to Germany. Here, at least, no egg is thrown from the empty chairs. Here no one switches off the microphone on you until the end.

Many friends ask me: “What are you doing in Albania with Artificial Intelligence?” Nobody has asked me about natural intelligence. This is diplomatic courtesy. Even in the house of the hanged man, one does not speak of the rope.

Gunpowder changed war, nuclear fission changed humanity, Artificial Intelligence is changing the world. Albania, as always, wasted no time with the intermediate phases. We did not go from the horse to the car; we went straight from the cart to the virtual minister. We tried the state with human intelligence for thirty years and couldn’t do it. Now we try to run it without it.

This is how Diella, our artificial minister, was born. Some ill-wishers say we created her to shift responsibility onto the machine. Slander! For shifting responsibility we have long had a national, patented system that works even when there is no electricity: the minister didn’t know, the director acted alone, the subordinate carried out the order, the order was not found, while the prime minister has his scientific theory: “Plums and pears are eaten behind my back.” I have asked agronomists all over the world about a garden where trees ripen behind the owner’s back. It doesn’t exist. It is an Albanian discovery and we expect to register it with UNESCO.

Diella has a few small advantages. She cannot be arrested. She cannot resign. She cannot appear on television and she never says that the responsibility belongs to Diella. And, above all, Diella does not eat. A minister who does not eat! For Albania this is a bigger revolution than Artificial Intelligence itself.

We often talk about the risk of technology falling into the wrong hands. And we have reason to worry. AKSHI, the institution that was supposed to be the showcase of digital Albania, according to SPAK’s accusations, became the showcase of something else: tender manipulation, violence, unlawful deprivation of liberty, money laundering and a structured criminal group. The world fears that crime will use technology. We reached unprecedented heights. The state technology itself raised its own criminal group. This is called self-sufficiency. If this is not complete digitalization, then I don’t know what is.

Then we have the incinerators. Allow me to show you a small case. A curious villager went to the Friday meeting of the Faithful Presence and asked the deputy where the incinerator is. The deputy told him:

— Here is the bill where the incinerator is paid.
— But where is the incinerator?
— The contract exists, the payment exists, the company exists, the bill exists. You want an incinerator too?
— What about the waste?
— The waste is your problem, not the incinerator’s.

This is what the world calls virtual reality. In Albania it was invented before the Metaverse. Only the money is completely real.

We have also entered the new era in real estate. From the “300 apartments of Bela”, SPAK seized two villas in Dhërmi. Diella is still calculating how many apartments fit into one villa. But here the machine has much to learn from us. With us, one property has the real owner, the owner on paper, the user and the tenant. Hasani lives in the building that Hyseni rented to him, who bought it from Hasani, who had taken it from a company of Hyseni’s with an address in Hasani’s building.

But the most valuable case for today’s UN proceedings is SHISH. You may have heard that the former head of SHISH, Vlora Hyseni, is suspected of having told Ergys Agasi, my coordinator: “Sleep easy, darling, I’ll close all the state’s radars for you.” Radars were invented to see. We improved them: now they can choose not to see. This is called a radar with a heart. Artificial Intelligence processes billions of data, but it has not yet reached that level of sophistication as with us, where even the radar has human feelings, heart and soul.

I want to talk also about the different realities that algorithms create for citizens. Here too we are ahead. In the same building, one turns on the television and learns that the country is living the best days in history; another opens the refrigerator and gets completely different news. One hears that the economy is growing, the other asks how much cheese costs. One hears how much wages have risen, the other receives the paycheck. The government has the statistics, the citizen has the most accurate algorithm ever invented: the wallet. And the refrigerator is the only institution in Albania that has not been captured. We must find a way to get to it too.

Then we have emigration. If Albanians continue to leave, Artificial Intelligence finally gives us the solution that politics did not find: replacing them with avatars. Avatars don’t ask for wages, don’t complain about hospitals, don’t leave for Germany and can be programmed to be optimistic 24 hours a day. We even have proof: Diella is the avatar of an actress. Diella gives lessons to citizens on how to behave, while the actress is in court over the face and voice that Diella uses. This is how we managed to make even Artificial Intelligence pay for a lawyer.

In this empty hall, which resembles a desert, I emphasize that lies can be multiplied billions of times by algorithms. We had solved this problem too much more cheaply and before Artificial Intelligence was invented: the same sentence is said by the prime minister in the morning, the minister at noon, the deputy in the evening and the analyst on television before bed. We don’t need an algorithm; the schedule suffices.

Then we have the digital “Mirror”, which will distinguish truth from lies. An ambitious project, because until today this job has been done mainly by the government. But every mirror has a serious flaw: it shows what stands in front of it. So a small programming problem remains: who controls the Mirror, who chooses the authorized source and, above all, what happens when the Mirror starts reading reality? We are left to solve that the Mirror does not seek political asylum.

Perhaps, before leaving, it will explain to us how a country can simultaneously have an AKSHI file with accusations of a structured criminal group, a paid-for incinerator that was never built, villas seized as suspected proceeds of corruption, and a former secret service chief suspected of promising someone that the state’s radars would be switched off for his sake.

We have chosen acceleration. We agree with President Trump’s proposal for acceleration. We accelerated towers, concessions, resorts, airports and 3D projects; now we are also accelerating Artificial Intelligence. A country that builds the future so fast has no time to deal with the present, and even less with the past, which sits locked in the prosecution’s files.

For the whole world the biggest question is: whom will the machine obey? For Albania this is the easiest question. We have years of experience with institutions that know very well whom to obey.

Here ends my sermon in the desert. Now we return to Tirana, where Artificial Intelligence builds the future, while human intelligence continues to search for three very old things: the truth, responsibility and the state.

Thank you!