We examined what we agreed was the central weakness of Mohan’s thesis: that the decades-long period of US global hegemony often referred to as the “rules-based unipolar order” might still be intact and is likely to persist relatively unchallenged. What Mohan described as the latest iteration — a state of “unilateral power shorn of responsibilities” — is little more than hard economic and military power that has dispensed with the need for soft power. As if soft power was not the key to, and even the foundation of, Washington’s historical global hegemony.

Claude’s contribution to this part of the debate contained two observations I found particularly interesting, which I’ve highlighted below in bold.

I find ironic your obviously pertinent observation that “the lag between cause and visible effect can sustain the illusion for a dangerously long time.” The article claims to expose a “delusion” (possibly seeking to echo the title of Richard Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion”) and you describe the position he echoes as an illusion.

And I love your clever metaphor about withdrawing assets “from the soft power account.” The metaphor itself is bankable!

Which leads me back to our own superficial conflict over whether this should be called a transition. When I first mentioned it I was thinking of a transition away from a previous state. You read it as meaning my emphasis was on the transition towards a different state. It was only by deepening the discussion that we came to agree. This highlights the problem of structural ambiguity in language. The concept of transition implies two contrasted states.

But when exchanging views on a concept like transition it’s as likely as not that one person may be focusing on moving away from an initial position and the other on moving towards a new one. A third person may focus exclusively on the transitional dynamics rather than a starting and end point. I use this example to emphasize the fundamental value of dialogue, which is less to achieve some kind of consensus than to clarify the levels of meaning in our own thinking and discourse. Do you agree and are you aware of philosophers, psychologists or linguists who have explored this facet of communication?

I hope readers will seek to understand the true value of this conversation, which appears on three levels:

1. It initiates what could be called a three-way and potentially four-or-more-way debate about a serious issue in the news.
   
2. My contention that the dynamic of the conversation can be used as the model for a new type of pedagogical practice.
   
3. The conversation quite naturally led to a specific and highly informative digression that enriches the debate and helps to ground its meaning: sources concerning the theory of communication.

Concerning the second point, I’ll begin by repeating what I wrote in the conclusion of Part 1, a message I address to educators or anyone interested in the topic of how education will work in the dawning age of AI.

“I recommend the strategy I’ve employed here as a basic pedagogical model designed for students learning to engage with a text. Whether it’s a history, philosophy, civics or scientific course, teachers could push their students to use AI bots to get ‘involved’ in a personal debate about the meaning of what their teaching.”

I hope readers can appreciate the fact that the value of this approach is manifold. It isn’t about finding a different way to assign the writing of an essay on a given topic, which is something I did with very real success in a classroom back in January 2023, weeks after the release of ChatGPT. Essays are performative. The process I’ve been implementing regularly in these columns is constructive, which means it produces its fruits incrementally. This type of conversation is about delving into the logic of dialogue as a social learning activity. It’s about the development of one’s inner voice in a continuously constructive process of exploration, rhetorical experimentation and the shaping of one’s own knowledge resources.

In this conversation, there was a point at which I realized that Claude and I were interpreting the term “transition,” whose meaning we both understood but which we perceived in slightly different ways. Through reformulation, we quickly adjusted our analysis of the historical process we were attempting to describe. But when I later thought about how that misinterpretation had taken place, I sought to clarify further, which led me to ask about research that has existed on that issue. I knew Claude could easily access the mass of writings that existed and could guide me to refine my understanding.

After all, Claude is an LLM, a large language model. Humans, in contrast, are SLMs, small language models. But we are also DLMs: Deep Language Models. The depth comes from our extensive and intense experience of emotionally conditioned interaction. Note that in this exchange, I had to notice the need to reflect on our problem of misunderstanding. I also had to be the one to describe it because I “felt” it was an issue to address. But once, thanks to my human depth, I had described it, the LLM could assemble the knowledge that helps to explain it.

This isn’t just about “looking things up.” It’s about the dynamics of managing an evolving context. Claude’s breadth or “largeness” becomes productive when it interacts with depth.

Understanding this dynamic of interaction can help us in our own personal projects that involve acquiring knowledge and skills. It may also be the key to developing truly effective educational practices that are not only “learner-centered,” but also, because of their interactivity, “social-centered.” We may be on the verge of a much-needed revolution in our approach to education. And AI will be the catalyst.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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