Digital Aristotle revisited

In the summer of 1985, Steve Jobs visited Lund to promote a “university consortium” and sell Macs to academia. During a dinner speech at the Svaneholm Castle, Jobs illustrated computers’ role as a new medium:

Do you know who Alexander the Great’s tutor was for about 14 years? You know, right? Aristotle. I read this I became immensely jealous. I think I would have enjoyed that a great deal.

…through the miracle of the printed page, I can at least read what Aristotle wrote… I can go directly to the source material, and that is of course the foundation upon which our Western civilisation is built. But I can’t ask Aristotle a question. I mean, I can, but I won’t get an answer.

…my hope is some day, when the next Aristotle is alive, we can capture the underlying world view of that Aristotle in a computer, and some day, some student will be able to not only read the words Aristotle wrote but ask Aristotle a question, and get an answer.

In 2012, school-teacher/YouTuber CGP Grey brought up the term “Digital Aristotle”. That term has stuck in my imagination since. [Insert cassette fast-rewind sound…] More than a decade later, I went back and revisited the video, and it turned out it wasn’t saying what I though it said. In summary, the video suggests a refined system of metrics that tracks each pupil’s learning progress and pulls level-adjusted content accordingly.

What I had in mind all these years instead, was a version of the AI in the film “Her” (2013). Obviously, I think this imaginary vision was way more exciting. It’s general super-intelligence (or a very convincing simulacrum thereof) presented as a personable avatar.

It’s an Aristotle character that you can not only talk to in a natural language exchange, but 1) has memory of specifically tutoring you and knows a great deal about the internal state of your learning, knowledge, and mental life; and 2) has access to a vast connected network of educational content and digital assets; and 3) is able to remix the content on-the-fly for a cinematic experience, in an ongoing didactic process for you, and for you personally.

Tutelage happens in conversational form: “Aristotle, tell me more about your theory of drama.” The presentation is also level-adjusted — talking about Poetics, not in the original literary style, but in a language that you can understand intuitively, supplemented with pop culture examples, almost like a generated “video essay”. Entertaining (it’s engaging because the answers directly address your interest) converges with educational.