Concluding Remarks and Future Thoughts

Abstract

As technological tools find their way into the realms of conflict resolution, the field gains increased complexity. Until a few years ago, conflict resolution would only touch fields such as Psychology, Philosophy, Economy or Law. Now, it also touches a wide range of technological fields that go much further than communication technologies to include Artificial Intelligence and many of its sub-fields. This significantly expands the possible future directions of research which, at the same time, plunges the field in a certain degree of uncertainty. One must, nonetheless, bear in mind that such uncertainty, doubt and suspicion is natural in any revolution and that, at the time, it is a Technological Revolution that we are living. Thus, a significant focus should be placed on analyzing the work carried out so far by researchers and commercial providers in an attempt to draw conclusions that can better guide the future steps. Moreover, these future steps should be guided not only by the technical challenges or the improvement of performance but also by more abstract notions such as fairness and transparency, with a marked concern on ethics. Only this way can the support and trust of significant slices of the society be harnessed, fundamental for the successful implementation and active use of the type of tools described in this book.