Plato, AI, and the art of persuasion: education through rhetoric revisited for the age of generative AI

Abstract

Generative AI is relatively new, but the way it produces utterances is strikingly familiar. Plato distinguishes Socratic teaching, which aims at truth, and the modes of ‘teaching’ employed by various sophists, rhetoricians, and orators, which aim at plausibility and winning arguments. Generative AI, like these latter figures, works by sounding plausible. This paper argues that there are fruitful comparisons to be made between the rhetoricians-as-teachers portrayed by Plato, and generative AI for education. Five key areas will be considered: (1) truth versus plausibility as aims; (2) how plausibility is established by wide consensus, with implications for AI bias; (3) how the utterances of the rhetorician or AI chat interface can be seen as a form of mimesis, with consequences for what is meant by ‘conversation’; (4) Cognitive and psychic dangers when mimesis becomes an habitual mode of interaction; and (5) the hype and concomitant economic pull that comes with the arrival of the rhetorician-as-teacher and AI education tools, respectively. It is argued that these comparisons have meaningful implications for AI in education, both as a diagnosis of a current state and as a more normative steer for future developments.