A Short Socratic Dialog
This essay from the Notre Dame Student Newspaper ran across my LinkedIn feed and it was just too much fun not to playfully respond to this today! I put the link to their editorial below
https://www.ndsmcobserver.com/article/2025/10/ai-proof-the-core-curriculum
I think my Diotimus makes a pretty good reponse!
The scene is a stone portico on a university campus, overlooking a well-tended lawn. Eudoxus, a man of earnest and passionate conviction, is speaking with a small group of younger colleagues. As they disperse, an older man, Diotimus, who had been listening from a nearby bench, approaches.
Diotimus: A fine and noble speech, Eudoxus. I hear in your words a passion for the very soul of this university. You speak of virtue and the formation of the citizen, not merely the training of the worker. It is a welcome sound in an age that often confuses the two.
Eudoxus: Diotimus. I am glad you were listening. Then you must surely agree that this new artifice, this generative intelligence, poses a mortal threat to our most cherished goals. It offers a shortcut through the difficult terrain of learning, leaving the student with a destination they never truly traveled to.
Diotimus: I agree with the foundations of your argument entirely. An education that is merely about acquiring technical skills is no education at all, for it feeds the hands but starves the soul. And you are wise to see that we cannot simply expect young students, burdened by many tasks, to always restrain themselves from taking the easier path. Your premises, I believe, are as solid as the stone beneath our feet.
Eudoxus: Then you must also stand with me in my conclusion! We must prohibit these tools in our foundational courses. We must restructure our assignments—in-class essays, oral examinations—to make AI use functionally impossible. We must protect the difficult, essential work of learning to read and write well.
Diotimus: It is your conclusion I wish to understand more fully. For you say that this task of learning to read and write well is one from which AI can only detract. This is a strong claim. Tell me, what virtues or skills do we hope to instill in a student when we ask them to perform a close reading of a text, say, one of Plato’s dialogues?
Eudoxus: The skills are many! The ability to discern an argument, to weigh the meaning of individual words, to see how a metaphor shapes a reader’s understanding, to synthesize disparate ideas into a coherent whole, and to have the patience to sit with a complex thought until it yields its wisdom.
Diotimus: Excellent. These are indeed the habits of a thoughtful mind. Now, consider two students. The first reads the eighty pages you mentioned, laboring to find every instance where Socrates speaks of “forms.” The second asks the AI to isolate every one of those passages for him. Has the second student already failed?
Eudoxus: He has circumvented the labor. He has not done the work.
Diotimus: But is the labor of searching the true goal, or is it the analysis of what is found? The second student now has before him every key passage, cleanly excerpted. He spends his time not in the hunt, but in the deep contemplation of comparing those passages, seeing how the concept evolves and is used in different contexts. Could his thinking not be more focused, his insights more profound, because his energy was spent on analysis rather than on the search? Could the AI, in this case, be less of a shortcut and more of a research assistant, enabling a different, perhaps deeper, kind of close reading?
Eudoxus: Perhaps in that specific case. But you are ignoring the more common reality! The student who asks the AI to simply summarize the dialogue. The one who floats by, as I’ve said, while the honest student does the arduous work. It is this injustice, this disgust with the cheater, that rightly fuels our desire to act.
Diotimus: I understand your disgust, and it comes from a love of justice. But let us examine this motive, for our motives shape our actions. Is your proposed ban a tool designed to help all students learn better, or is it a punishment designed to catch the dishonest?
Eudoxus: It must be both. By removing the possibility of cheating, we force the dishonest student to engage and protect the honest one from being penalized for their integrity.
Diotimus: But what if the tool, as we just discussed, can actually help the honest student? In your desire to thwart the one who would "float by," are you not also removing a tool that the dedicated student might use for profound learning? It seems your policy is born from two desires: one, a noble wish to cultivate virtue through reading, and the other, a powerful disgust for those who take shortcuts. Help me understand the balance. Which of these is the true master of your proposed law? If you discovered that AI, used wisely, could greatly accelerate the development of virtuous readers, would your disgust with its misuse still lead you to prohibit it entirely?
Eudoxus: I... I believe the risk of misuse is too great. The core skills are too important to leave to chance. My proposed assessments—oral exams, in-class essays—they guarantee the student’s own mind is at work.
Diotimus: They do. And they are worthy assessments. But tell me, what skills do they neglect? When a student writes an essay at home, over many days, do they not learn the virtues of revision, of rethinking, of sculpting a paragraph until it is just so? Is there no value in this slow, iterative craft? Your solution seems to favor the art of the orator, who can think on his feet, over the art of the writer, who carefully hones his work in private. Do we not wish to form both?
Eudoxus: We do, but the classroom must be a sanctuary where authentic work can be verified.
Diotimus: Let us call it a sanctuary, then. But is a sanctuary a place that prepares you for the world, or a place that hides you from it? These students will graduate into a world where this intelligence is everywhere. They will be lawyers, doctors, and citizens who must decide how to use it. Have we made them more virtuous by creating a curriculum where the tool is “functionally impossible” to use? Or have we simply delayed the essential lesson—teaching them not to be tempted by the shortcut, but to wield a powerful tool with wisdom, discipline, and for a virtuous purpose? What, in the end, is the greater education?
