Bernardo VENTURI

co-founder and president at the Agency for Peacebuilding (AP), Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna

Emiliano ALESSANDRI

Senior Advisor, Agency for Peacebuilding

How are digital technologies – and AI in particular – changing diplomacy and peace? Whereas in recent years, the question was whether ‘PeaceTech’ was even a thing, now the attention is shifting to specific technologies that enhance peacebuilding, along with a reflection on the risks they entail. 

You may not have come across ‘PeaceTech’ already, but you soon will – especially as the world grapples with a growing number of intractable conflicts. A buzzword just a few years ago, PeaceTech is now an established field of theory and practice that examines the complex nexus between technology and peace. The focus is on digital technologies that can improve peace processes and support sustainable, inclusive peace solutions. There is a broad range of technologies under the PeaceTech umbrella, from satellite imagery to specific software applications. 

What these technologies have in common is that they are increasingly relying on agentic and generative Artificial Intelligence to maximise their potential. Promising examples of the use of AI around the so-called ‘conflict cycle’ include enhanced early warning and conflict prediction systems, advanced data-driven and highly context-specific conflict analysis, improved stakeholder mapping and more nuanced and inclusive engagement strategies. PeaceTech AI has also become a resourceful right hand for mediators navigating complex strategies and negotiators facing difficult trade-offs. AI is also very good at identifying common ground in real time by cross-checking positions and sentiments of different stakeholders, including by drawing on social media content as opposed to formal positions expressed during official negotiations.

As the field is rapidly expanding, more and more applications are being tested and experimented, with tech experts working hand in hand with seasoned peacebuilders. Most of them are developing their own  PeaceTech expertise. so that they can offer innovative, cutting-edge solutions. While some in the peacebuilding field continue to nurture scepticism about digital peace instruments, the growing consensus is that PeachTech offers a much-welcome new array of tools if the goal is to enhance – rather than replace – traditional approaches and practices.

There is also a growing realisation that AI will have to be specifically trained for peacebuilding functions, otherwise the risk of biases – some of which are unintentional – could make peacebuilding more complicated and less trustworthy. Even PeaceTech enthusiasts admit that the field’s expansion shall not come at the expense of rigorous standards, including by  addressing head-on a range of ethical questions the use of digital technologies raises when applied to conflicts. One distinct risk is the progressive ‘de-humanisation’, that is, the danger of putting machines in charge of processes that are intrinsically human and in which interpersonal skills – above all empathy – have traditionally played a crucialrole. The issue of ownership is also increasingly coming to the fore. The technology being used is mainly Western-made for now (and often owned by profit-oriented private companies), with all the limits that come with this when applied to non-Western conflict settings that require specific local lenses for issues such as transitional justice and reconciliation.

Next to adoption issues, peacebuilders face a larger challenge: how to make PeaceTech relevant in a world that is becoming more conflict-prone each passing day? Indeed, conflict – including the hot, violent kind – is becoming endemic across vast regions of the world and war is being normalised as an instrument of state power and as a topic of public debate. As states fight or prepare for war, digital technologies are being increasingly used to fuel tensions and sow discord. AI is not only driving propaganda and disinformation campaigns in the media space. It is also being mainstreamed across a wide range of security and military applications, with autonomous weapons becoming a clear, dreadful, near-term prospect. In recent conflicts in the Middle East, from the war in Gaza to the US-Israeli war on Iran, AI was front and centre on issues such as target generation and operational execution. Against this backdrop, what can be done to foster PeaceTech and, more broadly, digital technologies for positive change? 

A most urgent task is to promote exchanges between the peacebuilding and the security communities, which seldom talk to each other – let alone share perspectives – even if they are often dealing with two ends of the same continuum. PeaceTech experts should sit alongside cybersecurity experts at fora where the security equations of individual countries or regions are discussed. The goal would be to formulate these questions in such a way that the dividends of digital peace technologies are fully appreciated, so that much more is done around conflict prevention and conflict resolution than is currently done around conflict preparation. A second task is to mainstream PeaceTech into multilateral initiatives that can raise its visibility and amplify its influence. The United Nations, thanks to specialised units such as the Peacebuilding Innovation Cell, has been experimenting with PeaceTech across Libya, Yemen, Syria and Sudan.

The EU is one of the remaining peace-oriented value-based international actors. But only this year, with the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), PeaceTech has been defined as a priority in the context of the EU peacebuilding programmes. The EU, now, has the opportunity to not only catch up, but to become a world champion of PeaceTech, leveraging an ecosystem where many of the PeaceTech NGOs are already operating and confirming the EU leadership in the responsible, ethical use of AI for human betterment.

The next European Security Strategy, now in the making, cannot miss the chance to mainstream PeaceTech. If it wants to be serious about peace, the EU cannot stake its success on deterrence and defence capabilities alone. The full array of digital technologies for peace should be valued just as much.

Photo credits: Shutterstock/mr_tigga