Guus de Bruijn

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has, within a few short years, found its way into the everyday lives of many, including me personally. I have used AI for numerous things, help with coding, summarizing long articles, and support me in the fight against boredom. I have found it to be a useful tool, with its limitations. Many of you will know that AI can help your coding, but will also completely transform it to its own (sometimes working) code, leaving nothing of your own (working) code behind. I think this subject is interesting, but has also been extensively discusses in every discussion about AI ever.

Besides its professional and academic applications, AI can help in a personal context as well, you would hope. Not too long ago I was practicing some songs with my band and I waned to rewrite a sax solo to a guitar solo. I gave ChatGPT the notes the sax solo and asked it to translate that to a guitar, an easy task for one of the most intelligent beings every created you would think.

ChatGPT started with giving me notes that were impossible to play on my guitar, being confronted with this fact, it did the same thing again, and again, and again. Once I finally got it to give me a playable version, it offered to give me a sample to listen to. Intrigued by the option, I decided to listen to the sound it generated from its own tabs, that looked decent. The sound created by ChatGPT was uneasy to listen to to say the least. In the end, we decided to play a different song.

This insignificant anecdote highlights the struggles of working with ChatGPT. The value of having a personal assistant at hand at all times is immeasurable, you just have to live with its issues, like hijacking your code, or making terribly awful music.

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Last week, while reading the news, one article in particular got my attention. I stumbled upon the following article, ‘Albania makes AI minister of contracts in battle against corruption‘ (Article is in Dutch). In short, the Albanian government has decided to make one of its ministers an AI agent, visualized by a woman called Diella in traditional Albanian clothing, to battle the widespread corruption in the country. The main reason would be that Diella would not be tempted by bribes, scared by threats, or have any conflicts of interest. Diella would be totally objective when deciding which firms get government contracts.

I think this is an interesting strategy to avoid corruption, but I did immediately identify some glaring issues. My main concern was who the person responsible for the AI’s ministry would be, whether there would still be a human overseeing its operations, or whether the AI would be the highest in command. It highlights a new ethical issue: can AI be held accountable for its own actions? Ministers should be held accountable for any mistakes and issues that occur under their management, but can we hold a bot to the same standards, and if not, can we still allow AI to be in such important positions without any accountability? I think this dilemma of responsible usage of, and even substitution by, AI will be an incredibly important topic in this age of unprecedented digital disruption.

The premier of Albania, Edi Rama, also did not provide any details about how the AI will be trained and how potential bias in its training and oversight will be mitigated.

I think that the lack of transparency and accountability, at least up until now, could actually lead to better disguised corruption, hidden by a cloak of in-depth technological know-how, that only a few people will be able to understand and dissect. The public will no longer be able to easily understand the decision-making process behind government contracts worth millions.

I would love to hear your thoughts about the accountability of AI and the effect of an AI minister on corruption in the government. Let’s discuss!

AI help in an academic and personal context

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AI use in Government

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