"Viewpoint diversity and artificial intelligence are two of the most widely discussed challenges facing higher education today. What if we could address these two simultaneously, employing AI to create productive intellectual friction across different political and philosophical positions? Consider taking this approach: Whom do you ardently disagree with, philosophically or morally, but view as smart and rigorous in their analysis and arguments?"
"I can think of one of my high school heroes, Ayn Rand, whose The Fountainhead I initially regarded as a powerful affirmation of creativity and innovation without knowing much about her deeper political ideology. This summer, I decided to read her collection of essays on capitalism, which I suspected I would disagree with at a fundamental level. Then I looked to AI. Could I engage Ayn Rand's ideas through a large language model that would "disagree" with me, allowing me to experience intellectual friction with less at stake personally?"
"Me: In your version of capitalism, how do humans/societies decide to produce something bigger than anyone could do alone? What if sending someone to the moon could never be coordinated through independent, voluntary contracts and instead requires some larger entity, like a government, to coordinate and incentivize? If democratic citizens vote to have the government organize a mission to the moon, why is that coercive?"
Viewpoint diversity and artificial intelligence intersect as a potential solution for generating intellectual friction across ideological divides. AI can be tasked to role-play thinkers one disagrees with but respects, enabling rigorous, low-stakes engagement. The approach involves identifying a respected yet disagreeable interlocutor and asking an AI to adopt that thinker’s perspective. The example used centers on engaging Ayn Rand’s essays on capitalism via a Claude 3.5 chatbot. The interaction posed questions about whether large coordinated projects, like a moon mission, necessarily require coercive government action and how capitalism addresses large-scale coordination.
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