While there is plenty of news coverage on potentially dystopian consequences of artificial intelligence (AI) research, especially when it comes to autonomous weapons and the idea that conscious machines may pose a threat to humanity, little attention is being paid to research that aims to use AI to promote peace across the globe.

Researchers with the United Nations (UN) Secretariat are working on ways to apply AI for conflict prevention and mitigation. In this context, the main focus is on two areas of AI research, namely Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). According to the researchers, ML and NLP can be used for the pursuit of peace in at least three ways.

First of all, AI can help decision makers from different countries overcome cultural differences and language barriers that often prevent them from being able to understand and relate to one another. Secondly, AI can expose underlying drivers for conflict that may not be properly understood by all parties involved. Finally, AI can help world leaders make more responsible and informed decisions. This is crucial, since major decisions are often still based on intuition.

Read more: Future wars will be waged with robots. But so might future peace