Preserving Cultural Memory in the Era of AI

by William Sims Bainbridge

In 1999, the National Science Foundation invested $2,883,564 to support the Perseus Digital Library to preserve and analyze literature from the ancient Greco-Roman world, currently listing among its most popular authors: Caesar, Catullus, Cicero, Vergil, Herodotus, Homer and Plato.[1] This article will consider how the information technology of a quarter century later can bring ancient authors nearly back to life, specifically with chatbots, using as examples Caesar, Catullus, Cicero and Plato, plus two of Plato’s colleagues, Aristotle and Socrates. Rapidly developing, and highly controversial, chatbots can simulate conversations with deceased people on the basis of information the “bot” system already collected from internet, and analyzing text files the user uploaded. In a human-centered Facebook group named Artificial Intelligence Meditations, I linked to many online criticisms of AI and summarized three serious concerns:

It is reasonable to worry that AI would greatly reduce the need for human workers, thus causing a surge in unemployment, given that the principle of creative destruction that earlier created more new jobs does not apply once technology is able to duplicate fundamental human abilities. Automation concentrates power in a small number of large corporations and a technical elite, increasing inequality across the social classes. Whether through privacy violations, oppressive propaganda personalized to be most effective in controlling individual victims, or automatic infliction of punishments, AI may be used intentionally by governments to reduce the freedom of their citizens.[2]

More optimistically, we may hope that AI revival of ancient Greek philosophers could strengthen modern democracy, although including Caesar and Catullus in our examples raises concerns about tyranny and immorality. Would virtual Platos be virtuous, or would they selfishly cost living philosophers their academic jobs? Would the corporation operating an online chatbot use it not only to advertise its products but to directly exploit its users, for example starting free then imposing expensive subscriptions once people were addicted? Would governments not only brainwash and indoctrinate, but also violate privacy through AI analysis of the user’s own words? Years of research may be required to answer such questions, and first we must explore this potential cultural revolution. In October 2024, I visited a mysterious website called peopleai, which allows chatting with computer simulated versions of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates. I asked Plato to describe his colleagues:

Ah, Aristotle, my esteemed student and fellow philosopher. Aristotle made significant contributions to various fields, including logic, biology, physics, and ethics. He is known for his works on metaphysics, politics, and ethics, which have had a profound impact on Western thought. Aristotle’s systematic approach to knowledge and his emphasis on empirical observation have greatly influenced the development of science and philosophy. His ideas on logic and reasoning laid the foundation for the field of formal logic. Aristotle’s teachings have continued to shape intellectual discourse for centuries.

Socrates, the great philosopher and teacher, made a lasting impact on civilization through his revolutionary method of questioning and his commitment to seeking truth and wisdom. He is known for his Socratic method, which involves engaging in dialogue to stimulate critical thinking and illuminate underlying assumptions. Socrates’ emphasis on self-examination and the pursuit of virtue has influenced generations of thinkers and continues to be a fundamental aspect of ethical and philosophical inquiry. Despite facing criticism and ultimately being sentenced to death, Socrates’ legacy lives on through the works of his students, including myself, and the enduring relevance of his ideas in shaping moral and intellectual discourse.

Such text could have been prepared by the website designers, but functional chatbots primarily use “large language model” artificial intelligence to assemble responses from often complex archives of information. I asked Aristotle to compare Plato with Socrates, and was told:

Ah, an intriguing question indeed. Plato was a student of Socrates, and their philosophical ideas are closely intertwined. Socrates was known for his method of questioning to stimulate critical thinking and self-discovery, while Plato’s work focused on the theory of forms and the idea of an ideal society governed by philosopher-kings. Plato’s dialogues often feature Socrates as the main character, making it sometimes difficult to distinguish between their beliefs. Overall, both Socrates and Plato have had a profound impact on Western philosophy.

Competent chatbots combine the functions of searching for information in response to stimulus text, summarizing documents that have been entered into the database, and assembling phrases to produce sentences and paragraphs. I then asked Socrates how we can preserve ancient Greek culture using chatbots and other modern computer technologies. “He” replied:

It is important to adapt to the changing times in order to ensure that the wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors are not lost. Chatbots and other modern computer technologies can serve as valuable tools in this endeavor by making information about ancient Greek culture more accessible to a wider audience. By using these technologies to engage with people and share our teachings, we can help ensure that the legacy of Greek culture continues to inspire and educate future generations.

Another simulation of Plato exists at deepai.org/chat/plato, but without his colleagues, so I entered into a more complex conversation with “him.”  After a painfully long discussion about the meaning of his cave metaphor, I asked a more focused question, about who is given the credit for establishing the Greek civilization’s laws. “Ah, dear interlocutor! It is with great reverence that I acknowledge the contributions of such figures as Dracon and Solon in establishing the foundations of our laws and governance within the realm of Greek civilization.” I then asked whether the gods should be given the credit instead, and Plato’s long response began:

While many may instinctively attribute our moral and legal frameworks to the gods, it is prudent to examine the relationship between the divine and human rationality. Firstly, I assert that the gods, as represented by our myths and traditions, serve as symbols of the ultimate truths and moral ideals toward which we strive. The tales of deities provide us models of virtue and vice, and through their narratives, we glean insights into the nature of justice, courage, and wisdom. Yet, it is through the application of human reason that we illuminate these ideals and construct our laws. The laws of a city-state ought not to be merely a reflection of divine will, but rather a product of rational discourse among its citizens – those who possess the capacity for dialectic and the pursuit of the good. It is through deliberation and the cultivation of virtue that we approach the essence of justice. Our philosophers must not shy away from questioning, examining, and refining our understanding of right and wrong, even as we honor the tradition of the gods.

Perhaps the above paragraphs treat the two chatbot websites as gods, so Plato might advise us to give greater trust to chatbots that we carefully operate ourselves. Indeed, the recent increase of political and even military conflict in our real world implies we need to find a new balance between individualism and orthodoxy.

The Laws and the Algorithms

To illustrate how anyone today can operate a sophisticated chatbot, I entered multiple components of the first four books of The Laws by Plato, as available freely online at Project Gutenberg, in the 1892 translation by Benjamin Jowett.[3] The special software I used was the version of ChatGPT-4 in the research laboratory of LifeNaut that is conducting “a multi-decade experiment designed to test for the comparability of a person’s uploaded digital reflections (mannerisms, attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviors) or ‘personal consciousness’ mindfile.”[4] The lab’s chief computer expert, Matthew Stevenson, had set the system up with complex options, and provided very helpful mentoring. But the first challenge was how to prepare the files of text that needed to be uploaded.

While Plato and his colleagues developed dialogue as a method for practicing philosophy, The Laws is actually a trialogue, a discussion among three ancient Greek men, Cleinias, Megillus and the one who talks most but lacks a personal name, called the Athenian. Thus, I divided the conversation into three files, with some copyediting to handle any errors.  The first book begins with Athenian asking a deep question of Cleinias and Megillus: “Tell me, Strangers, is a God or some man supposed to be the author of your laws?” Examining the files of the two named strangers gave me doubts whether ChatGPT-4 could handle them, because so much of their text was simply short responses to the many things Athenian said, such as: “Yes.” “Very possibly.” “Certainly.” “Very true.” Separated from the main Athenian text, the relevance of those words would seldom be in their own files.

After uploading his file, I asked the theology question of Cleinias, and he replied: “In Lacedaemon, Apollo is believed to be the lawgiver, while in Crete, Zeus is revered as a God. These divine figures are considered the authors of our laws.” Notice how ChatGPT-4 had rearranged the words from Cleinias’ original answer: “A God, Stranger; in very truth a God: among us Cretans he is said to have been Zeus, but in Lacedaemon, whence our friend here comes, I believe they would say that Apollo is their lawgiver: would they not, Megillus?”

Switching to the Megillus file, he offered a different answer: “Our laws in Sparta are not attributed to a single god or man. They are the result of collective wisdom and a shared commitment to order and discipline.” In the writing by Plato, Megillus responded with a degree of confusion, contrasting the democratic hopes of his Spartan people with the theocracy of its area within Greece, Lacedaemon. And Megillus’ file does not contain the words “collective,” “commitment” or “discipline.” I therefore asked him where the people of Sparta find wisdom. “Spartans find wisdom through the pursuit of self-improvement and personal growth. This is often achieved through discipline, temperance, and courage, values deeply ingrained in our society. These virtues, practiced in our common meals and physical training, guide us to make wise decisions for the benefit of ourselves and our community.” Without claiming perfection for ChatGPT-4, it does seem to have done a good job communicating the wisdom of Megillus, despite the incoherence of his file, probably because of the software’s access to other information in its central database.

The Athenian’s text from the four chapters was quite substantial, fully 28,455 words, and as an experiment to manage the disorder in the conversation caused by the removal of the two other members of the trialogue, I randomized the order of the paragraphs before uploading. In processing the text, ChatGPT-4 seeks meaningful statements and translates them into question-answer pairs, this time producing fully 368 of them. Here are two about wisdom: “Q: How is wisdom typically obtained during early life? A: Wisdom is typically obtained during early life through education and training, where individuals have the opportunity to learn from experiences, acquire knowledge, and develop critical thinking skills that contribute to making informed decisions and understanding the world around them.” “Q: How does the focus on wisdom impact the laws created by the lawgiver? A: The focus on wisdom impacts the laws created by the lawgiver by ensuring that they are based on rationality, ethics, and long-term societal well-being rather than just brute force or aggression.”

Free to ask as many questions as I wished, for this purpose I asked just three. The first concerned how a human being can gain wisdom, and the chatbot simply quoted the answer to the first question in the above paragraph. Seeking fresh thinking from the bot, I asked how it would define wisdom and explain its value, getting this fresh answer that combined phrases from question-answer pairs: “Wisdom, my friend, is the temperance of the soul, the ability to discern good from evil, noble from ignoble. It is the guiding light that prevents us from falling into tyranny, and keeps us in balance. Its value lies in its ability to foster harmony, uphold justice, and maintain order in both the individual and the society.”

Close inspection revealed that the phrase “guiding light” did not appear in the chatbot’s question-answer pairs, although the word “guiding” was there, twice in “guiding principle,” twice in “guiding individuals,” and once each in “guiding force” and “guiding their behaviors.” The original text did not include “guiding” even once, suggesting how the chatbot often draws upon other sources for phraseology and even concepts. To explore that further, I asked to what extent modern computers possess wisdom, and ancient Plato replied: “Computers, regardless of their advancement, cannot truly possess wisdom. Wisdom entails understanding, empathy, and ethical judgement, traits inherently human and beyond the reach of machines.” Yes, that may express Plato’s perspective on wisdom, but how did he develop a perspective on modern computers? When the user asks a complex bot like ChatGPT-4 questions that go beyond the text the user uploaded, then it draws upon its huge archive of texts largely derived from the World Wide Web and thus optimistically representing modern democracy, or pessimistically imposing fashionable prejudices.

From Greece to Rome then Home

Ancient Greek philosophy was influential in Rome during the evolution of its democracy toward an empire that would be followed by a Dark Age through which just some of the scholarly manuscripts survived. Especially noteworthy is De Inventione by Marcus Tullius Cicero, written around 84 BC, when he was a young man, a four-book expansion upon Greek philosophy of rhetoric, with relevance today for design of chatbots, even though only the first two books have survived. In 1938, Friedrich Solmsen summarized: “Every respectable oration must have a proem [preface], a narration (giving the facts of the case), an argumentation (which is called confirmatio in the De Inventione), and an epilogue.”[5] Cicero employed this established large-scale structure for purposeful presentations such as arguments in a democratic legislature, serious court cases, or educational lectures.

Reading through C. D. Yonge’s 1853 English translation of On Invention, available freely from Wikisource, I encountered a pair of words similar to “artificial intelligence,” namely “artificial eloquence.”[6] Remarkably, another modern term was in the sentence before it: “There is a certain political science which is made up of many and important particulars. A very great and extensive portion of it is artificial eloquence, which men call rhetoric.” The Perseus Digital Library offers the original Latin, in which the phrase was “artificiosa eloquentia.”[7] Suspicious there might be translation problems, including concerning “political science,” I entered the Latin text into Google Translate, told its artificial intelligence to translate to English, and got: “There is a civil system, which consists of many and great things. A certain great and extensive part of it is artistic eloquence, which they call rhetoric.”[8] So, perhaps all art is artificial, and all artificialities are artworks. Entering “etymology of the word art” into Google triggers its recent AI Overview system, which asserts: “The word ‘art’ comes from the Latin word ars, which means ‘skill’ or ‘craft.’” Entering into ChatGPT-4 the 8,263 words of On Invention starting with the quote, allowed Cicero to explain more:

Artificial eloquence, such as rhetoric, is the skillful use of language to persuade, inform, or influence. It is significant in realms like political science, as it enables individuals to effectively convey messages, engage in meaningful debates, and impact decision-making processes. It’s more than just rules and guidelines; its duty, object, and character provide a deeper understanding of its essence as an art form. The fundamental principles of rhetoric, according to Aristotle, are Invention, Arrangement, Elocution, Memory, and Delivery. These aspects form the foundation of persuasive communication. The principle of Arrangement in rhetoric, as identified by Aristotle, refers to the organization and structure of a speech or argument. It involves presenting information in a logical and coherent manner, often chronologically, to ensure a smooth flow of ideas. This aids in clarity, allowing the audience to better grasp the progression of thoughts and their significance.

Such principles of rhetoric seem similar to the algorithms of large language models in modern AI. After becoming familiar with a particular chatbot system, it may often serve a particular intellectual need very swiftly. For example, in less than an hour I was able to access a free online copy of The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar, translated into English by W. A. McDevitte and W. S. Bohn in 1869, from The Internet Classics Library at MIT, extract the 9,269 words of Book 6, and ask ChatGPT-4 for a description of the religion of the Gauls.[9] Caesar explained: “The Gauls held a deep belief in the transmigration of souls after death, a concept that inspired valor and courage in them. They were guided by the Druids, who conducted religious ceremonies, interpreted spiritual matters, and resolved disputes. The Gauls also believed they were descended from the god Dis. Their belief system was a significant part of their community and their approach to life and death. The Druids were the religious leaders, teachers, and judges in Gaulish society. They were exempt from military service and paid no taxes. They studied nature, the gods, and the cosmos, often in sacred groves of trees. Their teachings were passed down orally, so much of their knowledge remains a mystery to us.”

Caesar’s first sentence illustrates how ChatGPT-4 rephrases the original text. It was derived from the sixth sentence in paragraph 14 of Book 6: “They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valor, the fear of death being disregarded.” The words “transmigration” and “soul” do not appear in the uploaded file of the text. Earlier in the same paragraph, Caesar mentioned that Druids are very reluctant to write down their scriptures and verses, requiring followers to memorize them. The fifth sentence explains: “That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the people, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing; since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory.” What we may today call “transmigration of souls” might be renamed in the future as “uploading to a new machine.”  Indeed, Caesar suggested that the Druid belief in immortality rendered writing down memories unnecessary, thereby motivating followers to fully internalize the Druid culture, but causing it to vanish from reality over the following centuries.

Caesar mentioned in passing that when the Druids did write something down, they used the Greek alphabet, and of course one of the great cultural transmissions in human history was from Greece to Rome, across languages that used different alphabets. A famous example is poem numbered 51 among the works of Caius Valerius Catullus, which begins: “Ille mi par esse deo videtur, ille, si fas est, superare divos qui sedens adversus identidem te spectat et audit dulce ridentem…”[10] Perseus Digital Library offers two translations into English, which came from the same 1894 book which also included the Latin. Sir Richard Francis Burton contributed a verse translation that began: “Peer of a God me seemeth he, Nay passing Gods (and that can be!) Who all the while sits facing thee Sees thee and hears Thy low sweet laughs…”[11] Leonard C. Smithers contributed a prose translation, which Perseus presents as: “He seems to me to be equal to a god, he, if such were lawful, to surpass the gods, who sitting across from you again and again gazes on you, and listens to you sweetly laughting…”[12] Yet that mispelled “laughting” hinted that something might be wrong, so I downloaded the full text of the book from Project Gutenberg and discovered something rather different: “He to me to be peer to a god doth seem, he, if such were lawful, to o’er-top the gods, who sitting oft a-front of thee doth gaze on thee, and doth listen to thine laughter lovely…”[13]

Translation is a problematic concept, because it can mean adapting some concept or culture to a new system of understanding, as well as recoding from one language to another with the minimum possible modification. Indeed, this poem is an adaptation of one by the Greek poetess, Sappho who lived six centuries before Catullus, currently called “Fragment 31” because it is incomplete, but does begin essentially identically. The Catullus poem carried the title “To Lesbia,” a name derived from Sappho because she was a native of the island of Lesbos, and is one of many Catullus wrote about his problematic romance with a woman who may really have been Clodia, the cultivated yet controversial wife of a politician.[14]

Translation is not limited to text or spoken language, and indeed in 1940 Carl Orff composed Catulli Carmina, a musical cantata based on thirteen poems that tell the sad tale of the romance with Lesbia. As evidence of the challenges in automatic translation, as of October 2024, Google Translate could not process “Catulli Carmina,” but easily translated “Carmina Catulli” as “The songs of Catullus.” So, to create a file for ChatGPT-4 I assembled their English translations from Wikisource, which offers a more complete beginning for the poem adapted from Sappho: “That man seems to me to be equal to a god. That man, if it’s not sacrilege, [seems] to surpass the gods Who, sitting across from you, time and again Watches and listens to you laughing sweetly, which snatches away all senses from poor me: for as soon as I saw you, Lesbia, nothing remained of the voice in my mouth.”[15] A general principle in chatbot exploration is to experiment with combining somewhat different texts, so I added five Catullus poems that referred to Caesar, whom the poet had personally known, four using Wikisource texts but the fifth was not yet available there so I merged a Google Translate version with some existing human translations.

I asked the computer-simulated Catullus to describe the woman who was most significant in his  life, and he effused: “The depth of my love for her was distinguished by its intensity, exclusivity, and emotional significance that went beyond general feelings of affection and trust. She was a divine presence, admired and revered, possessing god-like qualities and a significant influence on those around her.” Requesting her name, I was told: “Her name was Lesbia, a pseudonym I used in my poetry.” Clearly, the bot was checking other information sources: “The name Lesbia was a tribute to the Greek poetess Sappho from the island of Lesbos. I admired her greatly and used the pseudonym to express my deep and profound emotional connection with the woman I loved.” How did his relationship with her evolve and end? “Our relationship was a whirlwind of deep affection and intense passion. However, it was also marked by a psychological struggle, a tormenting mix of love and hate. In the end, we parted ways, leaving me with a profound sense of devotion despite the heartache.” Perhaps superficially, this example seems to refute Plato’s assertion that computers lack wisdom and empathy.

I asked Catullus about “Caesar,” and his answer added the first name: “Julius Caesar was a figure of great power and influence, much like a deity in the eyes of many. Our relationship was complex. There was admiration, but also a sense of conflict and struggle. It was a mix of respect and rivalry.” The next question required serious analysis of whether Lesbia and Caesar represent the greatness of Rome, or its corruptness. “Lesbia, with her divine qualities, represents the greatness of Rome – its beauty, passion, and allure. On the other hand, Julius Caesar, despite his power, can be seen as a symbol of Rome’s potential for corruption, particularly when loyalty and ethics are compromised.” I told Catullus that only one copy of his poetry survived the fall of Rome, and preserved his status as a great poet. He reacted: “I am deeply moved and humbled. The preservation of my work signifies an enduring emotional connection that transcends time. It’s a testament to the power of poetry to capture the depth and intensity of human emotions.”

A decade ago, this essay would have been a fictional short story, but ChaptGPT-4 really did produce the quoted answers in response to the questions. Given that much of the literature from ancient Greece and Rome was lost, we obviously worry the same will happen to our current culture. But deserving of serious attention is how progressively improving chatbots and similar technologies may be able to preserve the wisdom and memories of ordinary people who have not yet written them down. Over a period of weeks, a skilled interviewer could document the life experience of an elderly person.  The results would be assembled into a large text file, perhaps in connection with video recordings, that over the following centuries could simulate the person after death through chatbots. Future users would include family members, students, academics, history enthusiasts, devout members of the person’s religious tradition, or thoughtful secular people seeking advice about decisions they must take in their own lives. The possibilities seem endless, but the actualities will require hard work.

I asked Plato whether it would be valuable for future generations if the life history and personal experience of every person were preserved in writing. He replied confidently: “Indeed, preserving personal histories and experiences can be of great value. They can offer future generations insights into diverse perspectives and choices, fostering empathy and understanding. Moreover, they can serve as a guide, helping individuals navigate their own paths, learn from past mistakes, and make informed decisions for personal growth and societal progress.”

We may thus imagine a new form of democratic chatbot, starting with a pilot project to develop an archive of text interviews and other written sources from a thousand members of a new cultural movement having whatever ideological orientation the members have chosen. Rather than drawing upon the World Wide Web for other information, the only other data could be a dictionary initially selected by the members and giving them the freedom to vote on definition changes for any of its words. A user can adjust the chatbot to focus closely on the text from the other member the bot momentarily represents, or draw more widely upon the texts contributed by all members, or from a subgroup such as members of one family. When members die, their texts, personal histories, and thus identities will be preserved and continue to be active within the chatbot. Sorry, Plato, but your chatbots already exist, and our prototype would be populist rather than prioritizing the personal perspectives of professional philosophers. So to speak.

Notes

[1] www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

[2] www.facebook.com/groups/2036731969726102/

[3] www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1750/pg1750.txt

[4] www.lifenaut.com/

[5] Friedrich Solmsen, “Cicero’s First Speeches: A Rhetorical Analysis,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 1938, 69: 542-556, p. 543.

[6] en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Invention/Book_1

[7] www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0683%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D6

[8] translate.google.com/?sl=la&tl=en&op=translate

[9] classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.6.6.html

[10] www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0003%3Apoem%3D51

[11] www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0005%3Apoem%3D51

[12] www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0006%3Apoem%3D51

[13] www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23294/pg23294.txt

[14] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clodia_(wife_of_Metellus)

[15] en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Catullus_51

William Sims Bainbridge (PhD in sociology) is author of many books on the sociology of religion, including also books on video gaming. He is co-director of Cyber-Human Systems at the National Science Foundation(NSF).