Designing AI for Conflict Prevention & Peacebuilding

The growing prominence of artificial intelligence (AI) poses, as President Biden stated, “enormous potential and enormous danger” for global peace and security. The peacebuilding field, technology engineers, and policymakers must work together to minimize the dangers of AI and maximize AI’s potential to prevent and reduce violent conflict, violence, and fragility and build sustainable peace globally. AI technology can vastly increase humanity’s capacity to make discoveries through machine learning and coherently summarize numerous text documents. However, AI can also easily generate mis and disinformation at a massive scale and, as a worst-case scenario, support deadly automated weaponry beyond human control. The peacebuilding field needs to raise awareness and educate how AI technology can positively and negatively impact global peace and security, and governments and multilateral organizations must urgently adopt robust AI standards and norms that prevent and reduce violent conflict, violence, and fragility and build sustainable peace. Additionally, peacebuilders should work with the technology sector to develop AI-powered tools that “translate” divisive rhetoric into peaceful language and thus promote social cohesion and peacebuilding.