The ethics around AI in diplomacy and governance
Inaugural conference of the International Association for Safe and Ethical AI (IASEAI) in Paris, France on Feb. 6, 2025. (AFP)
In the illustrious corridors of Techville, where innovation and ethics waltz in perfect harmony, a new era of diplomacy has dawned — one led by the infallible wisdom of artificial intelligence. Here, biases and controversies are but distant memories, thanks to our unwavering trust in machine objectivity.
After all, why leave delicate matters of global politics in the hands of flawed, emotional humans when we can entrust them to algorithms designed by, well, slightly less flawed, highly rational humans?
Gone are the days when human diplomats, with their pesky emotions and subjective judgments, steered the course of international relations. In Techville, we have embraced AI-driven diplomacy, ensuring decisions are made with cold precision.
As Friedrich Nietzsche aptly observed: “Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.” Clearly our AI systems, devoid of such human flaws, epitomize absolute health. Who needs evasion or distrust when we can simply program the perfect response?
Consider the groundbreaking Neural Diplomat 3000, which successfully brokered the landmark Techville Accord between two perpetually feuding factions — by analyzing 500 years of political history and suggesting the one diplomatic solution no human dared propose: a mutual block on social media. Conflict resolved in a single line of code.
Ah, the age-old critique that AI systems are riddled with biases. Ridiculous! The mere suggestion that algorithms could inherit the biases of their creators is laughable. Our algorithms are crafted by the most diverse teams of like-minded engineers, ensuring a uniformity of thought that guarantees impartiality.
Soren Kierkegaard once mused: “Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it but cherished by those who do.” And here in Techville, we cherish our irony, confident that our AI systems are the ultimate disciplinarians, guiding us toward ethical nirvana.
If an AI system disproportionately favors certain nations over others in negotiations, surely it is only because those nations best align with the machine’s perfect logic — certainly not because of any pesky historical biases embedded in its training data.
Take, for instance, the EquiBalance AI Protocol, designed to ensure fairness in global resource distribution. Critics were quick to point out that, oddly, wealthier nations seemed to always receive the lion’s share of resources. A bug? No, no — just an elegant reflection of existing geopolitical realities!
As Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel observed: “Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.” How fortunate we are to witness such greatness! Any controversies surrounding AI are merely the fabrications of skeptics who fail to grasp the brilliance of our creations.
We stand at the precipice of ultimate liberation — freedom from decision-making, freedom from error, freedom from responsibility! Let the machines take the wheel; we promise they have read more philosophy books than we ever will.
Rafael Hernandez de Santiago
Some say that AI cannot navigate the nuance of international diplomacy, that it lacks empathy and cultural understanding. To this, we simply say: Is empathy not just a series of well-calibrated response variables? Is culture not just an aggregation of behavioral data points? If so, then AI, with its vast datasets, understands human emotion and culture better than humans themselves.
Take the EmpaTech Conversational AI, which was programmed to handle sensitive peace negotiations. When presented with the demands of two warring factions, it wisely recommended an option neither had considered: the immediate automation of both leadership structures, replacing human decision-makers with AI overlords who could govern with impeccable logic.
A revolutionary move! Alas, the humans rejected this brilliant proposal, proving once again that irrational sentimentality is the greatest barrier to progress.
But of course, the greatest controversy of them all — the claim that AI diplomacy threatens human autonomy. Ah, the tragic irony! As Jean-Paul Sartre put it: “Man is condemned to be free.”
And yet, we stand at the precipice of ultimate liberation — freedom from decision-making, freedom from error, freedom from responsibility! Let the machines take the wheel; we promise they have read more philosophy books than we ever will.
In Techville, we rest easy knowing our AI diplomats, free from ethical quandaries and immune to controversy, lead us into a future where human error is but a distant memory.
We envision a world where world leaders consult not with each other, but with neural consensus units, AI-powered adjudicators whose recommendations are absolute.
A world where conflicts are settled not through negotiations, but through precise algorithmic solutions that ensure perfect efficiency (though, admittedly, sometimes at the cost of human dignity — but let’s not get bogged down in semantics).
Some still dare to ask: “What happens when the machines disagree with us?” To which we respond: Why should they ever? They are, after all, designed to be right. And when they inevitably reshape our world into one of pure rationality, perhaps we too will learn to love the irony of it all.
Until then, let us bask in the comfort of knowing that our future is in the hands of logic, precision, and an unshakable belief that machines, unlike humans, never make mistakes.
• Rafael Hernandez de Santiago, viscount of Espes, is a Spanish national residing in Saudi Arabia and working at the Gulf Research Center.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point-of-view
