Turbocharging SDGs by Activating Global Cycles in a 64-fold 3D Array

AI-enabled memorable pattern recognition through colorification and sonification

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Introduction

As noted in previous experimental use of AI, its possibilities might have been considered of fundamental relevance to the ambitions of the UN Summit of the Future (September 2024). The UN is faced with the relative lack of success in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Summit of the Future, Transcend Media Service, 8 July 2024). Hence the importance currently attached to "turbocharging" the SDGs -- whatever this can be held to mean.

It remains unclear whether the integrative objectives of such an event will benefit significantly from widespread preoccupation with AI following the UN's earlier AI for Good Global Summit (2023) -- both being events in which it is does not appear that any significant use is made of AI. Somewhat ironically the new Summit has had the specific intention of ensuring restriction in AI use (Global Digital Compact, 2024). Of relevance to this intention is past use of a consensus-based expert elicitation process which found that AI can enable the accomplishment of 134 of the SDGs 169 targets across all the goals, but it may also inhibit achievement of 59 targets (Ricardo Vinuesa, et al, The role of artificial intelligence in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, Nature Communications,  11, 2020,  233).

As noted by René Wadlow with regard to the Summit of the Future:

The working papers for the meetings do not present many new ideas. There is to be a final document called "Pact for the Future". As with all texts which must be agreed to by nearly 200 States, the ideas are general and have usually been presented before. Rather than a Pact for the Future, a Pact for Unfinished Business might be a more appropriate starting point. The Charter of the U.N. was written in the last months of World War Two, and its principle aim was to prevent future wars of the type still going on. (September Challenges, Transcend Media Service, 9 September 2024; UN Summit of the Future: A Structure for Action or a Shopping List? Transcend Media Service, 26 June 2023)

A more extensive assessment of the potential of the event, but from another perspective, is that offered by Stewart Patrick and Minh-Thu Pham (The Good -- and Bad -- News About the UNâ-'s Summit of the Future, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 19 September 2024). Despite its acclaimed importance, the indications are that its achievements may be limited (Thalif Deen, UNâ-'s Five Major Leaders Skip Key Summit, Inter Press Service, 19 September 2024).

The merit of a 64-fold articulation of insights relating to the binary framings of the challenges of governance has been explored separately (Clarifying a Two-state Pattern Language of 64 Modalities, 2024; Enabling engagement with SDGs through a 64-fold pattern, 2024; Reframing UN's Global Digital Compact as a coherent memorable pattern, 2024). This notably gave rise experimentally in the case of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals to their interactive presentation as a 64-fold articulation in 3D on the truncated tesseract. This was deemed to be of requisite complexity for the challenges of governance at this time -- and its comprehensibility (Comprehensible Mapping of the Variety of Fundamental Governance Functions, 2024).

Such presentations frame the further challenge as how to enable comprehension of the dynamics they may imply systemically (AI-enabled Mapping and Animation of Learning Pathways, 2024). This concern is inspired by the many efforts to present complex metabolic pathways in mapping exercises. In the light of that inspiration it can then be asked whether there are psychosocial analogues to such pathways -- and how they might best be presented (Memorable Configuration of Psychosocial "Vitamins", "Amino acids" and "Minerals", 2024). The 64-fold articulations mapped onto the truncated tesseract are then a point of departure.

The previous mappings were developed in the light of the encoding offered by the 64 hexagrams which were an inspiration of the development of the binary coding basic to computer operation and to the logical connectives fundamental to AI. That encoding embodies the transformation between conditions of change through changes in the line configuration of which the hexagram is composed -- as exemplified in the so-called Book of Changes. In the earlier exercise the hexagrams were positioned in the truncated tesseract to take account of simpler and more complex changes -- with a simple change resulting in positioning of hexagrams close to one another, for example.

With insights of systemic and/or strategic significance arrayed in this way, the question is then how simple transformations from one condition to another may form cycles through the truncated tesseract. As feedback loops in cybernetic terms, such cycles have been a notable feature of the extensive analysis of the networks of thousands of problems and strategies profiled in the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (Feedback Loop Analysis in the Encyclopedia Project, 2000; Tomas Fülöpp, Loop Mining in the Encyclopedia of World Problems, 2015).

More curious at this systemically challenged time is the seeming absence of consideration of the feedback loops within the dynamics implied by the configuration of Sustainable Development Goals given their degree of mutual dependency. Seemingly unique in this respect is the input/output proposal by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (SDGs Indicators as an Input-output System: A Novel Approach to Utilize Interlinkages between SDGs Indicators for Impact Assessment and Projections, E/ESCWA/CL3.SEP/2021/TP.5, 2021). This helps to frame the question as to whether UN preoccupation with SDGs is "cyclically blind," as can be otherwise argued (Group of 7 Dwarfs: Future-blind and Warning-deaf, 2018).

The question is then how such cycles are best detected, presented and rendered memorable. Hence the related concern with their colorification and sonification -- and the dynamics that might be highlighted in a 3D environment (Colorification and sonification of 64-fold patterns of cycles, 2024). The focus here on representation was originally inspired by that of Johan Galtung with respect to Forms of Presentation within the Goals, Process and Indicators of Development Project of the United Nations University (Forms of Presentation and the Future of Comprehension, 1980).

The argument concludes by challenging AI to explore the potential systemic significance of particular global cycles of SDG functionality through narrative articulations. As an alternative to the 64-fold complexity of the truncated tesseract, a 16-fold polyhedral configuration of SDGs is then speculatively presented through the 16-edged facetted square antiprism -- as the basis for a "polyhedral abacus" by which progress on SDG achievement could be indicated. That 8-vertexed polyhedron offers a challenge to the imagination by embedding it dynamically within the truncated tesseract -- as an exemplification of "turbocharging" SDGs.

As with previous experimental interaction with AI, the responses of ChatGPT 4o are distinctively presented below in grayed areas, in parallel with those of Claude 3.5. Given the length of the document to which the exchange gives rise, the form of presentation has itself been treated as an experiment -- in anticipation of the future implication of AI into research documents. Web technology now enables the w

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