Rama at the UN: People will decide whether artificial intelligence serves freedom or manipulation

During his speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Prime Minister Edi Rama said that artificial intelligence would not determine the direction of humanity’s future on its own. According to him, that decision will depend on people and institutions.

Rama also addressed freedom of expression and how it relates to technological development. He stressed that this freedom should not be equated with the unlimited use of technology and power.

“Artificial intelligence will not decide whether this century will belong to freedom or manipulation. We will make that decision. Machines will obey, but the question is whom they will obey, under which law and in service of what human purpose,” Rama declared.

He said that Albania had chosen acceleration rather than surrender, innovation instead of abdication, and the enhancement of human capabilities rather than their weakening.

The prime minister said that the country had also chosen freedom of expression, rejecting the idea that it should be confused with the uncontrolled freedom of machines, money and foreign powers to reach every individual and every place without being held accountable.

“We choose the truth, even when it is not easy or comfortable, because without a shared commitment to reality, we cannot build a shared public life,” he said.

Rama warned that the absence of a shared commitment to the reality of the world in which we live would constitute the gravest betrayal that the parents of this world, throughout human history, could have inflicted on their children.

“Without a shared world, there can be no United Nations,” Rama concluded, describing this as the end of his sermon from the wilderness and the hope he holds, which remains the last source of support.