Hurdling digital disruption: Using Rotary’s Four-way Test to promote the common good

Participants at a two-day Rotary Asia-pacific Regional Editors Seminar at the Manila Hotel earlier this week were engaged in a lively dialogue by Dr. Federico Macaranas, a political economist who served as Foreign Affairs Undersecretary during the Ramos administration, and as faculty member at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).

He framed his presentation: Digital Disruption in a VUCA World. According to the VUCA-WORLD website, it is a term first used in 1985 by economists and university professors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus in their book Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge on the challenges posed by various external forces and what these imply for corporate leaders.

The US Army War College adopted VUCA as a framework for analyzing the consequences of the demise of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. “The challenge was to find and implement new ways of seeing and responding under conditions of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.”

Profesor Macaranas introduced an interesting element: The Four-way Test of Rotary that consists of the following questions – Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Is it beneficial to all concerned?

There was, of course an elephant in the room. He was forthright in disclosing that he had used CHATGPT – and flagged with a chatbot icon the content in his slide deck that were generated by the use of this Aipowered app.

First, he surveyed how digital disruption happens positively and negatively in our Vuca-driven world by zeroing in on Rotary editors’ priority areas of concern such as: environment, mental health, fighting disease, growing local economies and peace promotion.

Second, he discussed why and how digital technology could be harnessed to promote the common good by disseminating factual information as an antidote to networked disinformation.

Third, he identified the foresight skills needed to thrive in the current global milieu by emphasizing the pivotal significance of lifelong learning.

He pointed out that proficiency in the use of Ai-powered tools such as CHATGPT, Bard and other large language models (LLM) will provide information services to Rotary project proponents and implementors with best practices already known to other benefactor-proponents. For example, Rotary club projects to promote bamboo planting among indigenous peoples should extend to enabling the beneficiaries to link with market channels, and this could be facilitated by data science.

On the flipside, there are fastmoving technology developments that need to be reined through appropriate government regulations.

CNBC reports that last May 15, a committee in the European Parliament approved the EU’S AI Act and brought it closer to becoming law: “The regulation takes a risk-based approach to regulating artificial intelligence.

The AI Act specifies requirements for developers of “foundation models” such as CHATGPT, including provisions to ensure that their training data doesn’t violate copyright law.”

With the aid of CHATGPT, Professor Macaranas flagged the algorithm biases that have evidently produced harmful effects. These include news recommendation algorithms that “have been found to disproportionately recommend stories about crime, particularly those involving people of color; this perpetuates harmful stereotypes and reinforces biases about certain groups of people.”

Also concerning are social media algorithms, such as those used by Facebook and Twitter, (that) can contribute to the spread of false or biased news stories; these algorithms prioritize popular content, which can result in sensationalized or inaccurate news being given more prominence.” Professor Macaranas cautioned the editors that the tremendous power of AI – as CHATGPT exemplifies – could spark deleterious consequences. Ironically, CHATGPT itself cautions: “Networked disinformation can have significant negative impacts on democratic processes in developing countries.” Disinformation erodes public trust in the credibility of democratic institutions and electoral systems, thereby weakening the foundations of democracy.

Cambridge Analytica closed shop in 2018 following the Facebook data scandal that brought about a $37 billion erosion in FB’S market value. Sandra Mintz, Ruth Appel and Michal Kolinski wrote in Current Opinion in Psychology on the finding that CA performed psychological targeting, “the practice of extracting people's psychological profiles from their digital footprints (e.g., their Facebook Likes, Tweets or credit card records) in order to influence their attitudes, emotions or behaviors through psychologically informed interventions at scale.” It is claimed that this was employed massively in the 2016 elections won by Donald Trump and to a lesser extent, in the Philippine elections held earlier that year. The camp of then President Rodrigo Duterte denied this allegation.

Professor Macaranas cites the following remedies that have been surfaced by CHATGPT to preserve journalistic integrity: “continuous monitoring and fact-checking of Ai-generated data through fact-checking tools and deepfake detection software; improving transparency in how AI algorithms assess and categorize articles; training journalists and editors in AI literacy and ethics; and pushing for better regulations and legislation of AI in the media industry and wider society, focusing on issues around transparency, privacy, bias, and accuracy.”

He rallied the editors to direct their efforts toward enhancing Rotary’s local and global impact in seven chosen areas of focus: promoting peace; fighting disease; providing clean water promoting maternal and child health; supporting education; growing local economies; and protecting the environment.

Rotarian journalists and editors could tap into the collective leadership and expertise of some 1.2 million members in harnessing the power of digital transformation to promote the common good using the time-tested tenets of the Four Way Test: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?