What is the Socratic method? Could it be used to test students in an age of AI?

Alcibiades being taught by Socrates, Francois Andre Vincent (1777).

Wikimedia Commons , CC BY Most students now use AI in their tertiary studies .

AI can also , under certain conditions, answer at least 65% of questions correctly in STEM subjects.

In the humanities, where the whole aim is critical and creative reflection, educators face a thorny question.

How do you develop and measure thinking of the kind that a machine could not genuinely imitate? AI has proved it can answer questions well.

But can it ask questions? And can it ask the right questions? This is the philosophical method at the heart of the work of the Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato.

His Socratic method of teaching is, perhaps, the mode of thinking we need to emulate in our teaching and learning today.

The great questions Plato wrote dialogues: texts that read (in nearly every case) like a conversation between Socrates (Plato’s teacher) and a partner drawn into conversation by Socrates after claiming to know something about living a good and virtuous life.

Goodreads There is a dialogue for all the great philosophical questions: what justice is; what courage or love really requires; what makes a good friend; and even how we acquire knowledge.

In each case the conversation is set by Socrates, who questions someone who seems to possess knowledge about a certain thing, or who has come to Socrates for advice.

It is not just the content of these dialogues that has prompted centuries of discussion, but their form.

Plato’s dialogues are extraordinary literary achievements, drawing on a range of genres and placing characters, historical and fictional, inside deliberately constructed settings.

These are challenging and strange texts in many cases.

They ask of their readers not just to read them as dialogues, but to call into question what we think we know.