Leveraging AI for diplomacy

The first time I tried using ChatGPT, I experienced a crisis of sorts. There I was, seeing with my own eyes how a free, downloadable, and user-friendly app could accomplish—in less than two minutes!—something that took me many years to learn and achieve with some degree of craftsmanship: creative writing.

Writing a poem or a personal essay is never a walk in the park. Yet, with the help of ChatGPT, people can now do this in an instant and pass it off as their own. On the other hand, those who do write their own poems and personal essays will now have to contend with a growing number of readers who assume that everything these days is written, partly or wholly, with the aid of apps like ChatGPT.

For many weeks after my initial encounter with ChatGPT, I lost my appetite for creative writing and resented the advent of writing apps. And then something happened. One of our young embassy officers suggested that we hold a workshop for our personnel on artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential uses in our day-to-day diplomatic work. The embassy then invited AI experts who introduced us to apps like ChatGPT, ElevenLabs, and Microsoft Sway, and showed us how we can utilize these for writing memos, preparing reports, drafting speeches, coming up with presentations, and so on.

The workshop made us realize how AI can literally lighten our workload and simplify our lives. Our resource persons, of course, stressed that these applications must not be left to their own devices. ChatGPT can at times “hallucinate” (i.e., generate false information), and its free version does not cite the sources of the information provided. One must, therefore, thoroughly verify such information and try to trace and properly acknowledge their sources. Otherwise, the submitted report could cost people their job in the foreign service!

One must also ensure that confidential information is not shared with these apps because they are capable of storing such information and freely share it with other users if asked. Finally, one must not surrender the ability for independent, critical, and creative thinking to these AI tools. Otherwise, the user would eventually become AI’s tool, instead of the other way around.

Moving forward, there is also a need to establish policies, guidelines, and other mechanisms to ensure that AI’s use in diplomatic work does not violate data privacy, intellectual property, and copyright laws, and that relevant ethical considerations are duly taken into account.

That short workshop opened my eyes to the vast potentials of AI as a diplomatic tool and made me feel less resentful toward writing apps. As for the dangers that these apps pose for creative writers, I now realize that no matter how sophisticated AI tools may become in the future, they can never take the place of these writers. Creative writing stems from two sources that often come together but can, in fact, exist without each other: the desire to express oneself, and the desire to communicate oneself to others. People write poems, essays, short stories, novels, and plays primarily to provide an outlet for the “fire in their belly” that must be released lest it burns them from within. If other people read and appreciate their stuff, well and good. But even if no one does, creative writers will continue to write for their own survival: they have to channel that fire before it extinguishes them.

At the end of the day, those who want to express themselves through creative writing will realize that writing apps can only hinder rather than aid them in their quest for self-expression. Hence, as long as there are people who need to find a way out for the fire within them, we will always have creative writers who are “AI-free.”

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Dr. Emmanuel R. Fernandez is a career minister currently serving as deputy head of mission and consul general of the Philippine Embassy in Singapore. He previously served in various diplomatic positions at the Philippine embassies in Italy, Jordan, and Spain. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and is the author of the book, “A Pathway to Diplomacy,” and three other books published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press and the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House.