How AI Could Revolutionize Diplomacy: From ChatGPT to quantum computing, emerging technologies will offer new tools for peacemaking
By: Andrew Moore | March 29, 2023
Image created by Dall-E
More than a year into Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, there are few signs the conflict will end anytime soon. Ukraine’s success on the battlefield has been powered by the innovative use of new technologies, from aerial drones to open-source artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Yet ultimately, the war in Ukraine—like any other war—will end with negotiations. And although the conflict has spurred new approaches to warfare, diplomatic methods remain stuck in the 19th century.
Yet not even diplomacy—one of the world’s oldest professions—can resist the tide of innovation. New approaches could come from global movements, such as the Peace Treaty Initiative, to reimagine incentives to peacemaking. But much of the change will come from adopting and adapting new technologies.
With advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, the internet of things, and distributed ledger technology, today’s emerging technologies will offer new tools and techniques for peacemaking that could impact every step of the process—from the earliest days of negotiations all the way to monitoring and enforcing agreements.
Although the well-appointed interiors of Vienna’s Palais Coburg and Geneva’s Hotel President Wilson will likely remain the backdrop for many high-level diplomatic discussions, the way parties conduct these negotiations will undoubtedly change in the years ahead. One simple example is the need for live language interpreters. The use of automated language processing—as exemplified by Google’s language-translating glasses—could smooth negotiations, reducing the time spent on consecutive interpretation.
While some tools will speed negotiations, others will better inform diplomats ahead of talks. As Nathaniel Fick, the inaugural U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, recently quipped, briefings generated by the AI-powered ChatGPT are now “qualitatively close enough” to those prepared by his staff. As large language models improve, AI will be able to search and summarize information more quickly than a team of humans, better preparing diplomats to enter negotiations.
Although these systems will need some degree of human oversight, allied parties can also compare notes, leveraging their respective AI systems. As more and more parties develop their own AI, we could see AI “hagglebots”—computers that identify optimal agreements given a set of trade-offs and interests—take on a key role in negotiations. Ever more sophisticated AI systems may even one day reach a level of artificial general intelligence. Such systems could upend our understanding of technology, allowing AI to become an independent agent in international engagements rather than a mere tool.
As negotiations begin, parties may augment their delegations with AI, providing real-time, data-informed counsel throughout discussions. IBM’s Cognitive Trade Advisor has already assisted negotiators by responding to questions about trade treaties that might otherwise require days or weeks to answer.
New technologies also allow countries to solicit citizen input more easily in real time. More than a decade ago, Indonesia pioneered a platform called UKP4, allowing everyday citizens to submit complaints about anything from damaged infrastructure to absent teachers. Although technology can be misused for manipulation and misinformation, artificial intelligence can also serve as a powerful tool to identify these misbehaviors, creating an ongoing struggle in the arms race between AI that will help and AI that will harm.
Intelligent systems can also help negotiators test various positions and scenarios in a matter of minutes. During the first round of Iran nuclear negotiations, a team at the U.S. Energy Department built a replica of an Iranian nuclear site to test every permutation of Iranian nuclear enrichment and development. In the future, an AI system will be able to run similar scenarios and virtual experiments faster and at a much lower cost.
When I worked on then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s team negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2014 and 2015, diplomats would meet in a variety of configurations—from large plenaries to one-on-one sessions—trying to discover the intentions behind the positions each side took and discern even minor differences among individual negotiators. While traditionally the privy of the espionage community, computer vision can now aid in this effort, identifying micro-expressions and other emotions by analyzing videos of negotiations. Even if diplomacy remains an art, it will increasingly rely on hard science.