Speaker for the Dead? Using AI to facilitate student engagement with historical thinkers and schools of thought

The formation of mature humans capable of personal growth and leadership in society depends on students increasing their ability to engage a diversity of experiences and viewpoints. These include historical experiences and ideas that shaped the formation of contemporary cultures and societies. Traditionally students engaged these ideas and experiences through text versions of an individual' s writings, usually in translation. Professors and secondary textual accounts then provided the background for interpreting these texts in their experiential context. The ability to use Generative AI models like Chat GPT to create custom chatbots with relative ease creates new possibilities for this kind of engagement. First, a well trained custom chatbot can engage students in real time with the experiences and perspectives of a historical figure. Secondly, multiple such characters can engage both students and each other in a larger discussion over shared concerns. This presentation will offer the insights of an experiment in learning by three different groups of students in such mixed discussion groups involving fellow students and AI chatbots. In order to deepen the experience, and to give the students a greater perspective on the process, the students themselves will have helped train the chatbots.