Albania just made an AI agent a government minister

Edition 119 | September 15, 2025

AI politicians are a ridiculous idea. Yeah, LLMs may sound slick and convincing, but they’re actually brainless machines that just tell you any lie they think you want to hear…okay I take that back, they’ll actually be perfect politicians.

Welcome back to Building AI Agents, your biweekly guide to everything new in the field of agentic AI!

The agent revolution has come to the point that countries are “appointing” them to be government ministers. Imagine that headline just 3 years ago.

In today’s issue…

• Albania adds an AI to its cabinet

• 💰 Our new program teaches you how to sell agents

• Replit’s agent carries it to $3 billion valuation

• The rise of computer-controlling agents

• McKinsey’s 6 principles of agent-building

…and more

🔍 SPOTLIGHT

More and more countries are starting to create ministers of AI. But it takes a different level of confidence in the tech to actually make AI a minister.

Last Thursday, the AI agent Diella was formally appointed Albania’s Minister for Public Procurement by the country’s prime minister, Edi Rama. Diella (“Sun” in Albanian), was introduced in January 2025 as a virtual assistant for the eAlbania online platform for accessing public services, and has assisted in over 1 million inquiries and document searches.

The Albanian government seems to be taking it fairly seriously—Rama plans to use Diella to evaluate and award all new government contracts, claiming that it will reduce corruption in the procurement process. Naturally, the opposition party ridiculed the move as a cheap publicity stunt, something Rama is apparently known for.

I’m inclined to agree with them. Although I’m very bullish on AI agents—why else would I write a newsletter about them—their current state of capabilities is something between that of an intern and the white collar analogue of an assembly line worker. Give them a relatively simple and well-defined task to perform, and they can consistently pull it off. Assembling data on companies bidding for government contracts? Sure. But reasoning critically about those companies’ track records, management, capabilities, and so forth to decide which are worthy? Negotiating with them, even? That’s asking too much.

Of course, it’s unclear whether the Albanian government actually expects Diella to do all this. It probably is just a publicity stunt, and all the serious decisions will still be made by humans. If this is the case, part of me just wants to stop being a buzzkill and let them have their fun, but I worry that it contributes to the kind of AI hype that leads to a bubble—and backlash. The “AI is a scam” crowd is always looking for cases like this to “prove” that it’s all just sci-fi hype.

All politician jokes aside, running government procurement is a serious job—let’s leave it to the humans for now. But if the Albanian government is looking to make that process much more efficient, the AI agent revolution has put some powerful tools at their disposal.

That’s real-world value, not just a quirky gimmick.

Always keep learning and building!

—Michael

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