How I Use Artificial Intelligence in International Relations Research and Analysis

Since Antiquity, Man has fantacised being served by machines which would have their own free will. In Hellenic Mythology, we find a creature called “Talos”. According to the myth, Talos was a giant automated creature made of bronze and blacksmithed by Hephaestus, at the request of Zeus, for the defense of Crete. This mythical creature was believed to be “programmed” to patrol the shores of the island three times per day and throw colossal rocks at enemy ships. Like today’s machines, Talos had also its vulnerabilities; the creature had one single vein which ran from its neck to its ankle and was sealed with a bronze nail. Inside that vein, there was the life-fluid of the Hellenic gods, called “ichor”. The myth ends with Medea using magic to make Talos remove that bronze nail with his own hands, allowing ichor to flow out, which led to his death, just as humans would die of self-inflicted hemorrhage or a modern machine would “burn” due to a virus or a powercut.

In real life, artificial intelligence has been with us for decades. It’s in our personal computers, in our calculators, in our factories, in our agricultural businesses, in our hospitals, in our garages, in our defence systems, in our planes and ships. It corrects our writing, generates our graphs, executes complex calculations, makes microchips, waters our crops, carries out difficult medical operations, finds what’s wrong with our cars, keeps our fighter jets in the air, operates our civil aircraft. It’s everywhere and it’s a large part of our lives, and, frankly, out of the people that see AI with a negative eye love their smartphones, their modern kitchens and their ability to board a plane to visit their relatives.

What is artificial intelligence, though? Encyclopaedia Britannica simply defines the term as “the capability of a digital computer or a computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. This includes activities such as reasoning, learning, problem-solving, perception, and language understanding”. From the point of view of such a definition, it is easy to associate AI with STEM and the systems being directly associated with it. However, AI technology has been particularly useful in social sciences as well, including International Relations. So, today, I am sharing how AI has made my life easier as an International Relations scholar and I am also sharing what practices I stay away from and why. Unlike other texts that you might have read on the topic, this post is more practical; I explain how I use AI in my own everyday life, instead of what its potential is for the international community.

It helps with writer’s block. Having many forms, writer’s block is very common. In my case, it can become a wall… In this case, I use generative AI to motivate my brain. My favourite tool here is Copilot, which I use in many ways. Sometimes, I directly ask for the answer to my problem, and I use the answer for inspiration. For the same end, and as silly as it might sound, I also use it to create images, poems, stories, anything really that could provide my brain with the fuel to start again. In my view, the whole process from synthesizing the right prompt to deciding whether you like the result can really help with getting over writer’s block, because, it gets you into a cycle of thinking and writing.

It helps me verify my ideas. Creative thinking is necessary in International Relations. And I have a very creative mind. But sometimes, what my head comes out with doesn’t make sense even to myself. I am in great need of a mentor or a tool who can tell me whether an idea of mine is realistic and feasible. So, again, I use Copilot to ask whether my idea is true and it answers with solid evidence. Of course, knowing how to ask plays a big role; one needs to choose their words carefully and input all the parameters they want the machine to take into consideration. And I have come into conclusion that no expensive classes will teach me that skill better than practice itself.

It helps me find new sources. Sometimes it’s not easy to find reliable sources for your research. Maybe you are working on a topic you don’t know much about or one that you know too much about. Either way, finding and choosing the data that work for you has always been a challenge; and, although the Internet has made the task of search itself easier, it is also an open ground for misinformation, publication of false data, and texts that have low scientific value. And, on top of that, scholars are expected to deliver more than in the past, precisely because the Internet is supposed to have made their lives easier! AI tools have helped me respond to this challenge in two ways: 1. I ask Copilot for scholarly sources on the topic I am researching; 2. I use those sources on ResearchRabbit to find more. Practically, the value of ResearchRabbit is that it creates a web of citations based on the sources that the user inputs. Hence, it can help users establish a solid theoretical background for their own work. I admit that I’m not fully familiar with this tool yet, but I am already excited with how easy it has made my life.

It helps me with data collection and analysis. There are plenty of AI tools that can help with data collection and analysis, including Big Data Analysis, Predictive Analytics, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Network Analysis, Sentiment Analysis, Automated Data Collection, Visualization Tools and Machine Learning Models. And, although I would love to be excellent at all those tools, for now I use Microsoft Excel to analyze the data I have collected, since Microsoft has incorporated AI tools inside its Office suite for the execution of prompts that would require specific skills. Now, I don’t need to know this button or that formula; all I need to do is ask the AI assistant to find and analyse the data for me. And, after it does what I ask, it suggests other requests as well. As you see, all I need is ask for the data. Although knowing programming languages would be of great help, I leave that part to software developers for now.

It helps me edit and proofread my papers. Given that the international language for academic literature is English, non-native English speakers like me benefit enormously by AI text editors. Grammarly seems to be the most popular amongst all right now, although I can’t always rely on it. Often times it doesn’t catch mistakes or it takes correct phrases for being incorrect, or the feedback that I get doesn’t exactly match with what I want to say. So, again, I go through my drafts multiple times and have them checked by the editor of my word processor as well.

It helps me put together nice slides. I used my MSc thesis defence as an opportunity to enhance the aesthetics of my PowerPoint slides with AI and I was impressed by the results. Pretty but professional, my slides were displaying perfectly the main points of my thesis while I was delivering orally the details. I love presentations and the AI feature in Microsoft PowerPoint feels like a game-changer!

So, although I have a lot to learn in the field of artificial intelligence, I have begun to embrace it. And, although the enhanced role of AI in our lives is a controversial topic today, I choose to believe that International Relations scholars can benefit from it providing that we use it to improve our thinking instead of replacing it with machines. Artificial intelligence might feel fun, but, given the nature of our work, we need to use it wisely in order to get the results that we need.