During a specialized meeting on “Foreign Relations in the Artificial Intelligence Era” hosted by the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, under the title of “Operational Experience of Application of Artificial Intelligence in International Relations by Using National Data,” Dr. Saeed Seyed Agha Banihashemi, a faculty member of the School of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: We at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in this regard, have actually started working. We took a thousand documents related to a country, converted its data into machine language, put an algorithm on it, and by using it, it answered every question we asked.

He added: There are any questions we have in those thousand documents. It is the goodness of artificial intelligence that the expert can easily find the information he needs before he is sent on a political mission. Before, he had to go and study, but now he can get information this way.

Referring to the application of artificial intelligence and its dangers, the School of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs faculty member emphasized: We must cooperate with countries that are active in this field. Some countries are very willing to work with us. In addition, in this regard, we should also pay attention to the establishment of a think tank.

Seyed Agha Banihashemi pointed to the progress of artificial intelligence and the reduction of errors over time and said: Artificial intelligence articles are now published in various scientific journals.

Emphasizing that we should think about our metadata and calculations, he added: We predicted the victory of Trump, the election of Mr. Rouhani, and the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. We also predicted the state of the relationship between North Korea and Trump. Who wants to control the data bombardment? Artificial intelligence can play an important role in this regard.

Seyed Agha Banihashemi explained the role of four factors of rapid progress in computing power in the past decades, the existence of big data, the development and promotion of machine learning techniques, and the investment of large companies in the development of artificial intelligence, said: Japan has set the goal that in 2030, in doing many of its business artificial intelligence will be used.

Stating that artificial intelligence has an important capability in the top fields of international relations that can be predicted, he explained that: Using it, a diplomat will not make the mistake of causing a war. At the same time, we must advance artificial intelligence in parallel with cyber security. If we fix our data and a hacker exploits it, significant damage will occur. Therefore, we must invest 100 percent in data security.

Stating that data collection and analysis is essential, the university professor said: This should be done on all Iranian data. Artificial intelligence can be very decisive in international relations. Digitalizing international relations, giving them to artificial intelligence, and drawing conclusions from them is possible.

Seyed Agha Banihashemi, criticizing the lack of confidence of the authorities regarding such categories, said: Every hour that passes, it will get too late to advance this issue. Failure to assign appropriate budgets and failure to accept the government body are among the obstacles that should be considered. It should be noted that the efficiency of government employees, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, increases with artificial intelligence.

He stated that China is first in artificial intelligence and the US is second. He added that artificial intelligence helped cause the least casualties during Coronavirus in Japan and even helped arrange classes.

The university professor pointed to the role of game theory in predicting and analyzing the future of relations between countries, especially Iran and the United States, and said: India and Japan have created AI departments in their foreign ministries.