CIC's Work on Artificial Intelligence
With the rapid advancement and uptake of emerging technologies, programs across CIC are working to analyze the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on global policymaking, including understanding new challenges and risks, how to mitigate them, and how to support its positive impacts. Explore this page to learn more about our work on AI in conflict prevention, global governance, justice, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
AI + Violence Prevention
Building on CIC’s past research on risk and protective factors, CIC is exploring how to develop a new AI tool. This includes developing an improved methodology to provide decision-makers with real-time insights into sources of conflict and resilience. This will enable them to map gaps in their prevention architecture, identify where international partners can contribute in a more targeted, timely, and impactful way, and adapt as conditions evolve.
- Develop a diagnostic tool that gives decision-makers real-time insights into national violent conflict risks and sources of resilience.
Reach out to Luisa Portugal and Céline Monnier for any questions.
Multilateral AI Governance
The Multilateral Reform program’s AI governance work focuses on strengthening coherence within this emerging architecture. The program examines how mandates interact, how processes evolve, and how institutional design choices shape the effectiveness of UN-mandated mechanisms. This includes mapping the UN AI ecosystem, engaging directly with Member States and UN entities to clarify roles and entry points for engagement, and providing structured ideas to support the development of processes such as the Global Dialogue.
Reach out to Joris de Mooij for any questions.
Multilateral AI Governance
AI + People-Centered Justice
CIC’s emerging technology, artificial intelligence, and justice portfolio operates on two core assumptions:
- Strong, well-designed legal systems, with the principle of equal access to justice for all at the center, can support a more balanced, inclusive, and equitable AI revolution, while increasing access to the benefits of technology for everyone. This includes benefiting private markets in a way that supports public benefit from private innovation.
- Reciprocally, an inclusive and equitable AI revolution could increase equal access to justice for all.
Based on these core assumptions, and leveraging multistakeholder networks of public, private, multilateral, civil society, and academic experts, CIC has the following focus areas related to justice:
- Identify and profile access-to-justice interventions that support prosocial and responsible outcomes related to emerging AI and technology. In parallel, identify and profile AI and emerging technology interventions that support positive access to justice outcomes.
- Facilitate greater collaboration between public and private actors to support equitable access to technology innovations for access to justice.
- Provide evidence-based policy guidance to support decision-makers working at the nexus of justice and AI, prioritizing cross-sector discourse, collaboration, learning, and action.
Reach out to Nate Edwards for any questions.
AI + the Sustainable Development Goals
To leverage the positive potential of AI, the multilateral system needs to utilize the tools already at its disposal. These tools enable the establishment of normative frameworks, the institutionalization of universal values, and the facilitation of collective action among diverse stakeholders. In particular, years of research, policy frameworks, partnership development, and programming aimed at advancing the Sustainable Development Agenda (Agenda 2030) could be an asset for maximizing the potential of the AI revolution. These longstanding efforts will not only benefit from new technologies, but they also offer tributaries by which the positive potential of AI can flow.
Reach out to Laura Powers for any questions.Related Resources
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Building Trust in AI through Justice
Nate Edwards
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A People-Centered Justice Approach to Implementing AI Governance: How the Justice Sector Can Support Inclusive, Equitable, and Enforceable AI Governance
This paper provides the latest state analysis of AI governance and how the justice sector can enhance its success. The authors couple secondary research and primary analysis of key governance processes with input from an array of experts in the public and private sectors, multilateralism, civil society, and academia to explore two critical questions:
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Guidance for the New Global Dialogue on AI Governance
This policy brief proposes an integrated, sequenced, United Nations (UN)-anchored, roadmap for the new Annual Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
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A New Era In Digital Governance: The Global Digital Compact’s Blueprint For Change
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AI for Justice and Justice for AI: Why Access to Justice Enables Better AI Governance
When designing new frameworks to regulate emerging technology, policymakers must use an approach that mitigates power imbalances at the individual and institutional levels.
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Building Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies In the Digital Realm
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Ushering in a New Era of Digital Governance: Next Steps for the GDC
The adoption of the Global Digital Compact (GDC) in September 2024 marked an overdue—but important—turning point. For the first time, all 193 United Nations (UN) member states agreed on a shared global vision for governing the new challenges in today’s digital age. However, the Compact is only the beginning.
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Why Member State Engagement Needs to be at the Heart of UN80 to Unlock its Success
This paper offers a practical toolkit of 10 recommendations for strengthening member state engagement in UN80.
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Can Emerging Technologies Lead a Revival of Conflict Early Warning/Early Action? Lessons from the Field
The early warning/early action (EWEA) community has been working for decades on analytics to help prevent conflict. The field has evolved significantly since its inception in the 1970s and 80s. The systems have served with variable success to predict conflict trends, alert communities to risk, inform decision makers, provide inputs to action strategies, and initiate a response to violent conflict. Present systems must now address the increasingly complex and protracted nature of conflicts in which factors previously considered peripheral have become core elements in conflict dynamics.
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Towards a Prevention and Peacebuilding Data Hub: Scoping the Future of Data Services and Capacity Building
The complex crises in our world—from rising instability linked to pandemic effects and climate change, to ongoing challenges of civil war, urban violence, violent extremism—require complex analysis and insights. Emerging technologies, data, and data science methods have been recognized as potential tools to help tackle some of these “wicked” problems across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.
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Telecom News: Responsible AI key to promote global peace: Experts
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