How to become an AI diplomat
Plus diplomacy amidst horror: Sudan and Gaza
In this week’s Ambassador at Large Gazette:
How (not) to claim asylum in an embassy
AI employs diplomats and more top jobs
Sudan and Gaza: lessons for negotiating a ceasefire
“British Ambassador” or “UK Ambassador”?
Your next diplomatic posting: training AI
Now, as diplomats use AI, AI has begun to use diplomats.
Mercor, an AI talent marketplace employing thousands of contractors to teach large language models judgement in specialist domains, has opened a line for geopolitical forecasting.
Geopolitical risk, escalation dynamics and international institutional behaviour are hard problems for models. If they were easy there’d be no need to pay humans for the training that can involve critiques of model-generated analysis and identifying nuance.
Nobody expects expert-trained models to replace Ambassadors soon (comment if you disagree). They will, however, brief fast; remember every precedent; and suggest plausible-sounding options.
If ministries don’t build their own diplomacy AI, they’ll be downstream of models trained on US tech sector assumptions, “Western” think tank framing and open source intelligence, all of which are partial.
That’s a path to systems that are confident, biased and slightly wrong.
And wrong too if China “is going to win the AI race”, as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang forecast on Wednesday.
Today it’s Mercor recruiting forecasters. Next, vendors offering multilateral negotiation models, small state foreign policy modules and consular crisis packs. If foreign ministries and their diplomatic academies don’t define these, the market will.
Meanwhile, there’s a short window in which international relations and diplomacy experts (those who don’t want to resist this trend) can sell that knowledge into AI training pipelines.
Want to be one of them? Apply here to earn $105-$125 an hour for remote, asynchronous part-time work. [Referral link.]
“We’re seeking geopolitical experts to contribute high-quality predictions and analytical reasoning on major international developments”, they say.
You’ll be interviewed by AI. Good luck!
Embassy asylum: the uncomfortable truths
