Service design can support peacetech development, says AI researcher Niina Mäki – ”You need to build a common language, and service design can offer the tools”

This summer service designer Niina Mäki from Kaiku Helsinki published a thesis about the use of artificial intelligence in peacetech. Mäki believes the industry would benefit from well led networks of experts.

When Futurice was looking for a researcher to join a project inspired by Professor Timo Honkela’s book Peace Machine, Niina Mäki was looking for a company to do her thesis with. An expert on development cooperation funding and a UNDP strategist, she found peace technology to be an interesting challenge.

– As a service designer, I am interested to explore how design can be used to overcome our world’s biggest problems.

Mäki started to work on her thesis Between peace and technology – A Case Study on Opportunities and Responsible Design of Artificial Intelligence in Peace Technology as part of Futurice’s Peace Machine project. Her thesis was published as a final project for her service design studies and included interviews with experts from the fields of peace-building and AI and workshops to innovate AI-based peace-building solutions.

Artificial intelligence could help analyse and predict

In her research she found three areas where artificial intelligence could support peace-building. The first one is AI-supported conflict analysis, that could help understand complex situations.

– Artificial intelligence can follow the moving parts in complex situations better than a human being. We are not talking about a conflict analysis tied to a timeframe, but of a constantly updating situation analysis.

“Artificial intelligence can follow the moving parts in complex situations better than a human being.”

The second area is supporting early warning systems.

– Machine learning can make data-based forecasts of things that have not happened yet. Early warning systems could use the data from the conflict analysis. These two areas are interlinked.

It’s hard for a single person to process all the information that is available. Artificial intelligence and machine learning can process large amounts of data and even analyse emotions.

The third area is the use of artificial intelligence to support human interactions.

– This area was the most unexplored of the three, but a machine could help us understand each other better and thus support peace. This concept is closest to Honkela’s book about a peace machine.

Can we talk about peacetech design?

Mäki’s research looked also into the question of how service design tools could be used in peacetech development.

– Peace technology must be first of all responsible, both in the development process and during its use. If you design peacetech wrong, people can die.

According to Mäki, designers often approach projects with a human-centered process, but peace technology requires a different approach.

– You need to look at the wider picture and think about the future impacts of the peacetech innovation. You also need to consider the unforeseen negative consequences. That is why it’s not enough to consider a single person’s point of view. You need to take into account the whole peace-building environment that includes also family, community and the state, the whole complex ecosystem of different peace-building bodies.

This requires fusing substance and technological knowledge. As part of her research Mäki invited peace-building and AI experts to innovate together.

– Everyone got so excited! But what happens when people from two different worlds speak a completely different language? How do you ensure that that the work continues after the initial excitement runs out? You need to build a common language, and service design could provide the tools for it.

And then you also need resources.

– Building technological solutions requires rather large investment. Artificial intelligence requires a lot of data. How is it harvested and made anonymous? You would need a bigger database or network that the AI could analyse. That would enable the creation of local peace innovations.

According to Mäki’s interviewees, one obstacle to peacetech development is the lack of time. Peacebuilders are in such a hurry that they don’t have time to innovate.

– In addition, the fields are so large, that one person will have a hard time understanding both the field of peace-building and AI. This is why I talk about the concept of collective intelligence. When you bring together experts from different fields, you achieve things that are greater than the sum of the parts. In order to create peacetech responsibly, you need to create networks of experts.

“In order to create peacetech responsibly, you need to create networks of experts.”

The cooperation between a human and a machine is an important part of the collective intelligence.

– AI-based peace technology is collaboration between humans and machines. It should utilise the strengths of both and have clear division of labour. Machines can help, but eventually it is the humans who make peace.

As part of her research project, Niina Mäki created design canvases to support peacetech development. Feel free to adopt them here: