Sustainable Development Goals through Self-reflexive Root Cause Analysis

Strategic clarifications from experimental interaction with ChatGPT

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Introduction

A previous exercise considered the possibility of Coherent Reconciliation of Eastern and Western Patterns of Logic (2023). This explored the clarification potentially offered by ChatGPT, notably with respect to a concluding discussion on the Potential relevance to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (2023). The concern with "reconciliation" focused on the requisite collective memorability of complex global strategic initiatives and how that is to be enabled if they are to be viable. This is particularly relevant in the light of the effort by the UN Secretary-General to envisage the nature of future global cooperation through a report titled Our Common Agenda (2021), namely how "common" is to be articulated in the UN's planned Summit of the Future (2024) -- potentially with the aid of AI.

The following exercise develops the concluding argument further by exploring the potential insights to be assembled through interaction with AI -- in this case ChatGPT (version 4.0). It is of course the case that there is considerable controversy about the use of AI-- if only in relation to its impact on governance. The United Nations system has yet to clarify the possibilities, despite the intense focus on the dangers of AI and the seemingly questionable value of the AI for Good Global Summit organized by the International Telecommunication Union in partnership with 40 UN sister agencies in 2023. The event appears to have made little use of AI in enhancing the dynamics of summitry -- if only as a prelude to the organization of the later COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference. This raises the question as to how the UN's Summit of the Future will be organized to transcend the long-evident inadequacies of international summitry.

The following interaction with ChatGPT not only endeavours to further develop insights into global strategy formulation. It is also understood as an experiment in clarifying the potential and limitations of such interaction. This necessarily includes its possible reinforcement of questionable hypotheses, potentially in the form of the so-called "hallucinations" -- now widely deprecated as calling into question the value of AI. In that respect however, little is said of the "hallucinations" which can be readily seen as engendered by global summitry as conventionally organized --and in which people are encouraged to indulge through appropriately crafted narratives.

As an experiment, the role of the author in prompting ChatGPT calls for critical comment -- given how any such prompting of AI might be used in relation to global summitry. It recalls the manner in which plenary events may invite questions from the audience, and how that process is typically "managed" by the organizing authorities to avoid the evocation of unwelcome issues. Aspects of this concern are discussed separately in greater detail with respect to eliciting consensus nationally and internationally (Multi-option Technical Facilitation of Public Debate, 2019). Ironically relevant is the manner in which asking questions in any such context can be considered as virtue signalling, and therefore suspect as a means of eliciting support for confirmation bias. In their preambles, the responses of ChatGPT offer corresponding examples of what might be termed "algorithmic encouragement" -- potentially to be set aside as equally suspect.

How might AI be used in a global summit in order to challenge the comfort zones framed and cultivated by Sustainable Development Goals? (Envisaging the AI-enhanced Future of the Conferencing Process, 2020). Whereas considerable value has been respectfully attached to strategic modelling prior to the recent impressive development of AI, both modalities bear ironic comparison with the forecasting processes on which Imperial Rome was variously dependent. Consultation of large language models in global summits may be curiously reminiscent of those procedures. As in use by an individual, engagement by a collective with an AI at such a summit may invite comparison with mirroring or an echo chamber -- variously reflecting back the biases brought to the process.

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