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Paper short abstract

This paper discusses the concept of AI diplomacy through an infrastructural framework showing how expert knowledge shapes diplomatic practice, governance, and geopolitical relations.

Paper long abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly central to diplomatic practice, yet the emerging field of AI diplomacy remains conceptually underdeveloped, particularly regarding its relationship to expert knowledge. AI diplomacy has become a buzzword circulating across policy and academic arenas, while remaining undertheorized. This paper addresses this gap through a structured, integrative narrative review of the literature. Our analysis shows that existing scholarship conflates two dimensions of AI diplomacy: AI as a tool shaping everyday diplomatic practice (AI4D) and AI as an object of international governance (D4AI). We argue that these represent complementary but analytically distinct strands. Across both strands, expert knowledge plays a crucial role in shaping AI science, technology, and innovation infrastructures, as well as informing governance frameworks that address AI’s risks and benefits. Based on our findings, we offer novel definitions of AI diplomacy and AI science diplomacy and put forward an analytical framework identifying three roles of AI in infrastructuring diplomacy. Infrastructuring can be understood as bundles of co-located and co-existing epistemic practices sustain AI diplomacy by a) shaping and co-producing everyday diplomatic practice, b) becoming an object of governance through standards and regulatory frameworks, and c) affecting geopolitical relations, including cooperation and competition between international actors. Unlike traditional science diplomacy frameworks, our approach foregrounds the contested, power-laden and infrastructural dynamics linking epistemic practices and diplomacy. We show that AI’s role in diplomacy is self-referential: the tools and systems diplomats use, the frameworks that govern them, and the innovation ecosystems that produce them are mutually constitutive.