This has been applied to a wide range of problems, ranging from information-routing algorithms to online search rankings to recommendation algorithms. But there is a broader sense in which trust and cooperation studies are useful — in modelling the way people behave in the groups that make up societies.28
In any society, business or network, the ability to evaluate and then trust partners is a crucial component of cooperation.29 Applying trust modelling to the networks of actors at work in the diplomatic landscape has the potential to better model potential outcomes of discussions, votes and negotiations.
This work comes at a time when the role of trust in broader society has been thrown into sharp focus by the phenomenon of fake news, manipulated images and deepfake videos. The diplomatic landscape is powerfully shaped by the information that flows through it, and false and misleading information has huge disruptive potential.30
A key emerging issue is the role of AI and how it will be used to understand and inform multilateral decision-making processes. At the heart of this question is whether AI systems will become better at interpreting the complex data fed into them or worse as AI-generated data distorts their view of the world. The possibility that AI systems could create a kind of artificial truth will be an important issue for the field.
