Why Cicero?

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Marcus Tullius Cicero was not only a great statesman and orator, but also an innovative philosopher, summarizing, and advancing, Greek philosophy for the Romans. Here’re some of my favorite Cicero’s quotes.

De Divinatione, I 7 (12)

nihil est autem quod non longinquitas temporum excipiente memoria prodendisque monumentisefficere atque assequi possit.

there is nothing which length of time cannot accomplish and attain when aided by memory to receive and records to preserve.
or:
Naturally, there is nothing that would be impossible to understand in a long time, fixing in memory and in writing what is already recognized.

О Дивинации I 7 (12)

Нет ведь ниче­го тако­го, чего бы нель­зя было постиг­нуть за про­дол­жи­тель­ное вре­мя, закреп­ляя в памя­ти и пись­мен­но уже познан­ное.

De Natura Deorum, I 25 (69):

69 This is a very common practice with your school. You advance a paradox, and then, when you want to escape censure, you adduce in support of it some absolute impossibility; so that you would have done better to abandon the point in dispute rather than to offer so shameless a defence. For instance, Epicurus saw that if the atoms travelled downwards by their own weight, we should have no freedom of the will, since the motion of the atoms would be determined by necessity. He therefore invented a device to escape from determinism (the point had apparently escaped the notice of Democritus): he said that the atom while travelling vertically downward by the force of gravity makes a very slight swerve to the side. 70 This defence discredits him more than if he had had to abandon his original position. He does the same in his battle with the logicians. Their accepted doctrine is that in every disjunctive proposition of the form ‘so‑and‑so either is or is not,’ one of the two alternatives must be true. Epicurus took alarm; if such a proposition as ‘Epicurus either will or will not be alive to‑morrow’ were granted, one or other alternative would be necessary. Accordingly he denied the necessity of a disjunctive proposition p69altogether. Now what could be stupider than that? Arcesilas used to attack Zeno because, whereas he himself said that all sense-presentations are false, Zeno said that some were false, but not all. Epicurus feared that if a single sensation were admitted to be false, none would be true: he therefore said that all the senses give a true report. In none of these cases did he behave very cleverly, for to parry a lighter blow he laid himself open to one that was more severe.

Here we have both determinism and logic analyzed in a rather modern fashion. Furthermore, the determinism cuts to the core of predictability in AI systems: the more we can try to model, the more sure we become in our models and outcomes. But should we ever assume we can model everything? That slight disturbance to the defined trajectory of atoms is what prevents us from doing so.

De Divinatione II 2 (7)

When the last-named fate had befallen my country, and I had been debarred from my former activities, I began to cultivate anew these present studies that by their means, rather than by any other, I might relieve my mind of its worries and at the same time serve my fellow-countrymen as best I could under the circumstances.

De Natura Deorum I 4 (9)

Now the readiest mode of imparting a knowledge of the subject in all its departments and branches is to write an exposition of the various methods in their entirety; since it is a striking characteristic of philosophy that its topics all hang together and form a consecutive system; one is seen to be linked to another, and all to be mutually connected and attached.

О Природе Богов I 4 (9)

А тем сред­с­т­вом, к кото­ро­му я при­бег­нул, я не мог вос­поль­зо­вать­ся луч­ше, чем отдав­шись не толь­ко чте­нию книг, но так­же изу­че­нию всей фило­со­фии. А все ее раз­де­лы и все час­ти лег­че все­го узнать, если эти вопро­сы изло­жить пись­мен­но, ведь во всем этом есть уди­ви­тель­ная после­до­ва­тель­ность, так что одно кажет­ся свя­зан­ным с дру­гим в одну цепь, зве­нья кото­рой меж­ду собой соеди­не­ны и пере­пле­те­ны.

Human focus of AI is an approach similar to Cicero’s dialogues. In a way this is a way to persuade humans, not machines, in the correctness of theories, that machines can then employ. If the results are surprising, they will be debated by humans again, and corrections will be undertaken. Or at least we hope so.