Dialogue remix

This assignment structure bridges classical philosophy with modern technical critique.

Assignment: The New Phaedrus Dialogue

Objective: To use AI as a collaborative partner to “remix” Plato’s concerns of writing into a contemporary debate about Large Language Models (LLMs), focusing on issues of memory, authority, and truth.

Step 1: Warm up

We’ve already talked about Phaedrus in class, so you should understand what it’s doing and how it’s doing it. If you missed class, you should get clear about those.

Prompt: “I am reading Plato’s Phaedrus. Based on his arguments that writing diminishes memory and creates the ‘appearance of wisdom,’ ask me three questions to see if I can apply those same fears to AI today.”

Explore further. See what kinds of pros and cons you can uncover about writing in general over the centuries. What has happened since Plato that might be included in a modern dialog about skill erosion and authority with AI?

There are no “right” answers. Only questions, perspectives, suggestions, ideas. Have as many as you can (in a reasonable time) before moving on.

As you’re doing the steps, cut and paste your prompts into a separate file for reference later.

Step 2: Assign roles

Consider your modern remix. What roles do you want your characters to play to ensure a diverse debate. Aim for 3-5 characters. Less is boring, more is confusing unless they are super specific.

For example—and these are just for fun, do not use these exactly:

• The Freightened Academic: Argues that AI erodes human cognitive skill and creates “zombie” knowledge.
• The Techno-optimist: Argues that this is just a new tool for expanding human reach.
• The Purist: Focuses on ideas of trust and piracy—how do we know what is “real” or “authored” anymore?

Make sure you clearly tell your AI co-loquitor what perspectives the roles are meant to play otherwise they all end up saying the same kinds of things.

You can also assign literary characters or pop culture figures to your roles so that the character imitates their “style”. You still need to tell AI what the character is doing in the dialogue though—don’t let AI decide that or the dialogue gets too muddled.

Step 3: Draft

Ask AI to follow the Phaedrus (yes, it “knows” it) and Platonic dialogues in general to enact a similar AI debate in a modern setting (e.g., a university coffee shop or a tech lab). Aim for 500 words. Pleaes make up your own prompt here so we get more variety in our dialgues.

Step 4: Revise and Iterate

• After readings through, what new ideas come to mind?
• Are the roles/positions your defined clearly delineated?
  • How can you sharpen them: “Make the purist interested in trust
• Ask AI to identify the key themes in your dialog. Yes it just created it, but it’s not like a real person who is attached to it. It can “objectively” evaluate.
• Ask for perspectives that are relevant but missing?
• The idea is to work with AI to create something more interesting than the usually bland initial output.
• What questions does your dialogue raise?

Step 5: Refine

• Hopefully the characters now have a clear position to defend. But do they have a personality to match? How can you get AI to get a character to speak like it thinks?
• Is there a balance of the characters or do some dominate?
• Is there a natural flow to the argument? How can you make the whole thing easier to follow?

Step 6: Post

• Add your dialogue to the discussion board so others can see it.
• Make sure the formatting comes through. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but if it’s really hard to read because it’s one giant parargraph or something, you get a 0 until you fix it.