Go to ICLR 2026 Workshop AI4Peace homepageWhen Peace Becomes an Externality: Structural Misalignment Between AI Safety, AI Ethics, and AI for Peace
Track: tiny / short paper (up to 4 pages)
Keywords: AI militarization, AI governance, AI ethics, AI safety, AI for peace, dual-use research, research infrastructure, neutrality in AI, sociotechnical systems
TL;DR: Peace is treated as a downstream add-on in AI research; this paper shows why peace must instead function as an upstream design and governance constraint alongside safety and ethics.
Abstract: Artificial intelligence research is increasingly embedded in contexts where its outputs are repurposed for military, security, and large-scale surveillance applications. In response, multiple research paradigms have emerged to address potential harms, most prominently AI safety, AI ethics, and a growing body of work framed as AI for peace. While each paradigm engages with questions of responsibility and risk, their underlying assumptions about where harm arises and how it should be addressed differ substantially. In this paper, we argue that peace is systematically treated as an externality across dominant AI research frameworks. Rather than being integrated as an upstream design and governance constraint, peace oriented concerns are frequently deferred to downstream applications or policy interventions. Through a comparative analysis of AI safety, AI ethics, and AI for peace, we show how this structural misalignment limits the ability of peace oriented initiatives to influence research trajectories that feed into militarized and security-driven deployments. We conclude by outlining how repositioning peace as an infrastructural concern within AI research ecosystems can strengthen harm prevention and support more durable peace-oriented outcomes.
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Data Release: We authorize the release of our submission and author names to the public in the event of acceptance.
Submission Number: 29
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