 War prediction algorithms are these seemingly abstract things, but in reality There's tons and tons of new big data sources coming online And we're trying to use all that information to predict where future events in the world are gonna happen like war like genocide like large-scale atrocities and killings So there's this analogy that I always like to draw back on when I talk about war prediction algorithms to make them more accessible and understandable So for millennia, we survived without really understanding the dynamics of gravity and then all of a sudden we came along and said Okay, let's understand gravity through physical forces and that allowed us to then make engineering solutions to counteract it So building things like roller coasters sending people to the moon came directly because we understood the dynamics of nature War prediction algorithms and human nature are largely similar So we have all of these governing laws that we don't necessarily understand yet And if we want to engineer solutions around creating peace then the first step is Understanding the laws of nature that contribute to war One of the big data sources for predicting revolts and revolutions is Twitter data If you have governments like Brazil that are having tons of revolts and they know where they're gonna happen They can do large things to quash those revolts at the same time If you're a country that's trying to produce revolts to provide democracy then it goes both ways People have been doing quantitative forecasting for decades They did during the Cold War predicting whether Russia was about to send missiles over to the US We're pretty good at understanding really simple trends that we have immediate data on In Brazil and Venezuela people could predict where and when within a region of three to seven days Future revolts are gonna happen The reason why war prediction algorithms are something that I think you really really need to invest a lot of effort in now is Because we've had a Cold War two world wars in the last hundred years It's a little bit naive to think that with all this new technology That's going to allow smaller and smaller entities to contribute a large effects towards a global population That we're gonna survive unless we meaningfully push society down a peace-filled and prosperous path Rather than just allowing it to blindly guide itself into walls