With the increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to warfare, attempts to develop advanced applications of artificial superintelligence (ASI) in this field are almost inevitable. At the moment, ASI precursor technology, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is, for the most part, not being engineered for warfare; instead, it is being created for civilian purposes. However, because of its potential for technological supremacy, once achieved ASI will certainly either be applied to warfare or developed for warfare.

AGI technology is being developed by many projects globally, but Silicon Valley and China are the closest. It is certain that AGI will be informed by principles and values. For instance, if Russia were to be the first to develop this technology, then it could be informed by Cosmism (or Putinism). Given Russian expansionist nationalism involves ‘hot’ war, a Cosmist ASI could direct a global war.

Preloading principles into an ASI thus seems essential. For instance, if an emerging ASI endorses a ‘Star Trek module’, it could adopt an optimistic vision of how to develop Earth, ourselves, the solar system, and the galaxy, where one or more ASIswork together with humanity as friendly partners.

As such, what Eliezer Yudkowsky and other Silicon Valleyers are trying to do is to hard code being ‘friendly’ into an ASI such that it could never turn on humanity, i.e., by hard coding it to always act altruistically, via high-level philosophical principles, or ‘supergoals’.

The obvious threat is that an ASI could still be used to wage catastrophic war by one party on another through political subversion of its supergoals. Turchin and Denkenberger’s position is that politico-military subversion of an ASI will always be attempted; this is also our position in this paper as nothing at present prevents such subversion. With this context in mind, a ‘Terminator’ situation is a possible worst case scenario. Hot, and even possibly cold wars, could indicate to an ASI that countries want war and violence over peace, and ‘winning’ a game of global war could be what the ASI understands to be its own role.

With regard to peacebuilding, the current UN system has not been good enough at preventing major conflicts, especially if we bear in mind the latest Russia-Ukraine war and the possibility of larger scale warfare arising from the New Cold War.

The end goal of peacebuilding with regard to international relations and humanity’s relations with an ASI is a universal, global peace. There already exists a draft of a Universal Global Peace Treaty, drafted by the Center for Global Nonkilling, which would be a diplomatic symbol for peace understandable by an ASI, preferably if its creating nation state were a signatory, and especially if it were also a signatory, as the rules and principles of diplomacy would hopefully apply. The closest we have come so far to such an instrument is the Global Ceasefire in 2020, which came from seemingly nowhere, due to COVID, and was backed by the UN.

What diplomatic rules could be deployed are also discussed in this article. We suggest conforming instrumentalism, the underpinning dynamic for the postwar era Geneva Conventions and likely for the UN itself.

Our position is that hard coding ‘peace’ as a supergoal for humanity via a Universal Global Peace Treaty (UGPT) will force an artificial superintelligence (ASI) to consider whether peace might also be its own supergoal (hopefully via conforming instrumentalism) and so act as a check on the ASI waging war, even if it is directed to do so by a belligerent nation state, and if necessary irrespective of whether the belligerent is a signatory. The UGPT could also set aside a signatory position for the ASI, which could concretise the possibility of it acting independently to transcend any warlike ambitions on the part of its nation state creator.

Thus, the purpose of this research was to understand the threat from ASI-directed or enabled warfare and whether a UGPT is needed in order to help to reduce the risk of an antagonistic ASI. The article argues that a UGPT could provide the necessary context to inform an ASI that humans are indeed peaceful creatures wanting peace as part of their core principles.

Academically, this research examined whether this peacebuilding measure would be viable, through the lens of conforming instrumentalism, a new branch within international relations theory. Conforming refers to the idea that states either conform upwards to civilizational ideals or conform downwards towards, for instance, genocide, while instrumentalism refers to the fact that treaties like the UGPT are negotiable diplomatic tools. Conforming downwards would be a terminator scenario (humanity being killed by an ASI), whereas establishing agreements and conventions that prioritize, for instance, humanity’s peaceful expansion into space in partnership with an ASI whilst solving climate change would be conforming upwards.