Writing in the Age of AI - still need the wisdom of Socrates and Plato

 Why did Socrates not write anything down? What we know about Socrates and his thinking was written mostly by his student, Plato. 

Socrates and Plato understood that the best way to go after truth was through conversation and questioning; hence the Socratic method. Conversation allows us to question, pose possible answers, find contradictions and flaws in our thinking, critically and rigorously dive ever deeper into a topic, and so on, all is real time. Conversation provides a the best, most efficient and rigorous way to critically think through hard problems, and hopefully dig some nuggets of truth out of the problem. 

Writing is different, and not as efficient or effective. Certainly it takes longer. As we read something, we naturally (and hopefully) develop any number of questions, and needs for clarifications, and 'what if' scenarios. Reading something is open to interpretation, since we are unable to ask the author and get feedback; in so many ways, we need to try and read the mind of the author, and this requires assumptions and guesswork. The process of learning, and then questioning, and then refining our views and answers, may or may not fully happen if it is all through writing. 

Now we have AI. What would Socrates and Plato think about this? This article is interesting and provides some thoughts about it. I agree with the author of the piece that there is good and bad, depending on how we use the AI in writing. It can certainly write a student assignment or a paper we publish on websites or try to submit to other publications, and we do not have to do the heavy lifting thinking. That is NOT how we should be using AI. However, what the great philosophers would likely appreciate about AI is that it can be your debating 'partner'. You can have a conversation with an AI and do the equivalent of, or at least a good approximation, the Socratic method, where we can have a back and forth of questioning with the AI to better and more rigorously develop our thoughts. That type of use is not so different than having a human partner to debate and critically think with, and this makes AI a very useful tool in writing. 

Here are the 'Big 3' Greek philosophers that help create Western thought. Some 2500 years later, we still can use their thoughts and wisdom.

              From https://sidiropoulos.medium.com/socrates-plato-aristotle-2939c66b161f.