Dialectica

Inspiration

I was inspired by Hegel's theory of the dialectical method and by Plato's Dialogues, which feature Socrates, arguably the founder Western critical thinking. For this reason, I put Socrates in the logo. Hegel's dialectical method can be applied to the progression of history, so I felt that applying the method to my project was the best way to make something truly influential. I was also glad to be able to tie in two highly influential philosophers into this project.

What it does

Dialectica is a tool to be used by educators to create assignments where students can engage in dialectic discourse with an AI. The teacher can configure several aspects of the discourse, such as the topic, the role of the AI in the dialogue, the provided scholarly evidence to be used for evidence based reasoning, and the grading criteria for the student. The student engages in a constructive dialogue against an AI, which may take a Socratic, sceptic approach in the conversation. The student must use short and concise writing, that displays a high order of thinking. The student is then evaluated based on involvement and preparedness. The intent is to contrast the formulaic nature of the student essay, which is easy to cheat on with ChatGPT, and provide a form of assignment to foster critical thinking skills.

How we built it

I researched the dialectic method and issues educators run into with ChatGPT, and brainstormed the idea of Dialectica. After that, I created the presentation, and the ChatGPT-based demo.

Challenges we ran into

I felt that it was difficult to translate exactly what the LLM needs to do to ChatGPT, particularly since some features, such as scholarly sources and the evaluation of the student, would be hard to implement with ChatGPT in a short demo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud of the analogy of Hegel's concept of Abstract-Negative-Concrete to the current situation, in which the abstract concept of critical thinking is negated by modern technology, demanding a concrete solution, which Dialectica attempts to achieve.

What we learned

I learned more about Hegelian philosophy, usage of LLMs, and how may educators approach usage of ChatGPT.

What's next for Dialectica

The next step would be building the actual website, as well as working with an LLM to achieve desired results.

Built With

• chatgpt