The Great Conversation: An Overview
“The Great Conversation” refers to the enduring exchange of ideas among the most influential minds of Western civilization. This dialogue, spanning centuries, encompasses a variety of disciplines like philosophy, literature, science, art, and politics.
Philosopher Robert Hutchins popularized the concept, advocating for an education system rooted in the study of Western civilization’s seminal works. According to Hutchins, the Great Conversation is a two-thousand-year-old dialogue, continuing vigorously even today.
The Great Conversation transcends cultural and temporal boundaries, encapsulating a diverse array of voices and viewpoints. It includes monumental contributions from thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Descartes, and Kant, among others.
The “Great Books of the Western World” serve as a catalog of these monumental works, offering scholars an opportunity to understand the historical trajectory of ideas that have shaped our world. The Great Conversation, apart from illuminating the past, also fosters critical thinking, urging individuals to formulate their unique perspectives.
The Great (AI) Conversation
Like many, I’ve yearned to read The Great Books and steer my “classical” education, but time constraints always seemed to get in the way. However, the rapid advancements in AI tools seem to offer a viable solution, enabling me to delve into these classics through an AI-enabled “conversation.”
Hence, The Great (AI) Conversation was born—a venture into AI-assisted tutoring.
Language models in AI have the ability to comprehend a wide range of texts, which surprisingly include many of the great works of Western civilization. These AI tools can summarize, answer questions, provide explanations, and even facilitate discussions on the themes and ideas emerging from these works. For this project, I will leverage the capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool (currently GPT 4.0, as of May 2023).
The project’s purpose is to utilize AI as a tutor, a guiding beacon in the vast sea of The Great Conversation. My aim is to devise a series of specialized prompts for dissecting individual works and instigating my own computer-led discourse. Is it guaranteed to work? There are no assurances. The goal is to assess the potential of the AI tutor and uncover new learnings along the way.
As AI tools evolve and improve, they’ll be incorporated into the project, ensuring it stays in sync with the progressive strides of AI-based tutoring. Explore the books, authors, and ideas using the links at the top of each page, or subscribe to the project blog to tag along on the adventure.