FINDING NEW PATHWAYS TO PEACE

#AI #futures #tech4good #mediation #humanrights

It struck me that any book or journal article I might write in the areas of peacemaking, mediation and human rights or peace education will be overtaken by new developments enabled by AI.  So I thought it best to just jot down a few reflections here in this brief thinkpiece.

It is inevitable that the traditional academic publishing route, for example, will have to take on newer modes and be reshaped radically as knowledge grows and cross-pollinates exponentially.  It will not be just this industry that will be upended and have to adapt and change drastically, as well as rapidly for starters, almost in real time. Virtually every industry, perhaps human endeavour, will experience change. Mustafa Suleyman (linkedin.com/in/mustafa-suleyman) in his honest, incisive and thoughtful book The Coming Wave, has given us some forewarning, but are we all ever going to be fully ready to meet the enormous challenges in so many fields simultaneously?  Can we all even think of riding the wave?

Just reflecting even briefly on how conversational AI, for example, might affect mediation illustrates for me how dramatic the changes will be.  Imagine for a moment: two equally competent AIs (or should they, to reflect some realities, be unequal?) or several simultaneously (owned and driven by whom?) already primed with full understanding of a complex, long-standing conflict, empathy, a complete lack of bias (is that possible?) and nigh-sentient thought processes, if set up to talk to each other, as if from opposing factions, with third  party interventions (is that conceivable? Would third parties be necessary? Who or what will determine the knowledge bases and parameters that each would draw on? Or should we rely wholly on the knowledge and advice offered by the AIs? Also given that so much  ‘earlier’ knowledge, wisdom, and insights that were captured  in tomes--entire cultures, languages and histories preceding the dawn of the information age, that have not (yet) made it onto today’s databases, often resulting in reinvention of the wheel…) where escalating tensions have led to outright attacks and counterattacks (and there are several we can draw on today unfortunately, even as I write) how would they (the AIs) end up dealing with it?  From where I stand, I can hardly predict how the AIs will take on each other.  Will they be able to broker a peace within an hour? Some gaming applications in the area of conflict resolution have tried some of this in real time already. Will solutions be presented that both sides (humans included!) will find thoroughly acceptable? 

If such a scenario is conceivable, then peace is possible…within a matter of minutes or hours perhaps.  But is this doable, if not today, within a matter of months, or a few years?  Peace is an imperative of our times. No killings can ever be justified on any grounds. And we all need to act to ensure that peace takes hold.

Think of the human and material costs that could be saved, the trauma avoided.  So one of the many questions here is, will AI developments bring us true and just peace and harmony?  Does the sum of all current human knowledge, wisdom and endeavour mean this could be a reality?  Or will AIs used by those keen on consolidating their power bases dominate?  Who or what will determine who wins or loses, when the best way for all of us would be a peacefully mediated, fair and just solution? Who or what determines fairness and justice, by what standards? What are the norms and values that will be used in the ‘construction’ of solutions? How will they be weighted?

A 100 questions crowd in, and complexity, which has been in discussion in the area of multilateralism since the 1970s at least (as I had pointed out briefly in my 2008 doctoral dissertation, delimited as it was by the word count!) rears its head again, among a myriad other unanticipated factors. Who exactly will wield power, Will there be winners and losers, all over again? Or none? or will power flatline and become an outdated concept, will money and wealth take on new colourations and come with a fresh slew of aspirations and responsibilities as many of the hard and fast parameters as we know them today melt? Let it not be said that we do not live in tumultuous, challenging, but exciting times.