The ai-Socratic method - the antidote for wilful stupidity

@6ai Technologies

We currently live in an age of misinformation, and nonsense is the preferred discourse, it seems, where the use of technology for quick yet hallucinatory summarization has become the accepted norm. Many are stupidly choosing to give up their agency and assume cognitive debt instead—brain rot!

The applied intelligence (ai) system is based on the Socratic method, developed by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, a form of communicative dialogue based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and articulate reasoning, which can lead to the discovery of contradictions in one's own beliefs. The process forces participants to be uncomfortable in confronting their ignorance and biases to gain knowledge and know-how by seeking the objective truths.

The applied intelligence process, therefore, is the antidote for wilful stupidity.

The Socratic method teaches people how to think because, contrary to popular belief, thinking is not automatic; it’s a skill that must be developed. For Socrates, the best way to learn is through open-ended and objective conversation; productive conversation leads to better insight generation.

The ai Socratic method tests what is being said, dissects claims, and establishes a mutual understanding of the topic—it extends to all fields of discourse from business to law and politics to personal development.

Being objective and not being a slave to your biases and the first step to enlightenment. The ai process helps one get over these natural human biases in order to learn and gain wisdom. The ai process draws on ancient techniques for modern wisdom, applying them practically to think logically and reason optimally.

6ai software – the commonsense alternative          

The 6ai software builds on the Socratic method to democratize strategy development so anyone can design anything from high-level, multi-billion-dollar corporate strategies to personal growth strategies themselves. And without the need for any special skills or training, at a fraction of the cost of hiring consultants.

The applied intelligence (ai) system is an intellectual framework tool that builds human capacity, helping ordinary people achieve extraordinary things.

The use of generative AI in the 6ai software does not aim to make AI competitive, surpass, or replace human intelligence. Instead, it acts as an augmenting partner, a reinforcing tool that is practical, purposeful, and responsible—enhancing human intelligence, capabilities, and creativity.

6ai Technologies does not employ large language models; instead, it develops focused language models, integrated into customized strategy AI agents to carry out a multitude of tasks. Underscoring our core architecture, built to scale!

The overriding equation for our IP endeavours to find the idea that has the highest degree of utility across the most probable future worlds unfolding. Finding the Maximum Utility and sustainability of an idea relative to the unpredictability of ever-changing environments. 

Identifying the winning characteristics or conditions for the idea to succeed is critical because how the future unfolds is independent of the idea. 

You can’t figure out a strategy unless you can clearly state what winning looks like, most especially, what winning looks like for your context and your organization. 

6ai breaks things down into the different mental or physical constructs that would create different ways to identify the optimal playing field for winning.  

Generates a realistic assessment and differentiates between the organizational capabilities that allow you to “play” in this area, vs. those that can allow you to compete and win.

@6ai Technologies

The Six Steps (6ai) is a proprietary system that guides the user through a step-by-step progressive process, retrieving and developing highly relevant information and turning it into insight for strategy formulation.

Open-ended, Probing, Clarifying, Socratic (OPCS) questioning facilitates critical thinking by challenging assumptions and beliefs to generate objective

truths on axioms, which encourage multiple perspectives...finding the gaps in logic to build warrantable strategies.

The Conversational Contextualization Questioning Framework (CCQF) forms the basis for prioritization, contextualization, and the discovery of insights to identify the right strategic problem to solve.

Strategy Development Agents (SDA) are deployed and are self-contained, autonomous entities that carry out multiple tasks by multiple Agents working in concert. This is an integrated, complete set of capabilities rather than disembodied ones. 6ai-SDA’s ability to communicate, cooperate, and negotiate with other agents, relative to the 6ai Socratic Method IP, makes the system processes seamless to integrate into the overall 6ai strategy development process.

All of which captures the authentic aspirations of users and provides a platform for them to execute their vision. The process further aims to create an empathetic space and team environment where users can share their thoughts, ideas, and perspectives through an engaging and thoughtful process.

Beware of false prophets and said ‘AI revolutions’

The recent OpenAI GPT-5 release has many asking, “Is this it and what if AI doesn’t get much better than this?” It probably won’t! Believing that just building larger and larger models to no end will bring AGI nirvana is pretty damn stupid.

The excitement around AI might have set expectations too high, but artificial general intelligence (AGI) was never in the cards to begin with. It was just a bogus narrative by Sam Altman to raise more and more money from gullible investors.

There is nothing truly new or groundbreaking about GPT-5…just an iteration with the same problems. The hype and words from Altman promising “we are basically there with AGI” were a lie. A tall tale for the wilfully ignorant to consume.

Gary Marcus, an AI entrepreneur and professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University, and a well-known AI critic, has been warning us for years that the AI narrative is all hype and no substance.

“For nearly three years, I have been saying that the pure scaling of LLMs — adding more data and more parameters — would eventually run out, and that it would fail to solve hallucinations and boneheaded errors and that scaling laws were merely empirical generalizations, rather than physical laws.”

“This myth that motivated a half-trillion-dollar industry is dead! The release is overdue, overhyped and underwhelming.”

Consider that an AI chatbot regularly uses over 200 million times the energy and computing power that the human brain does to perform its very narrow tasks—not impressive. And the human brain can go on to perform a multitude of other tasks without breaking a sweat. Why would we ever want to give that power up? Never mind the unsustainable energy drain that will deplete the plant.  

There are certainly tasks AI can do faster and better than humans, and we should utilize AI in that capacity, but the AI-everything nonsense must stop; it is unproductive. In medicine and research, for example, AI can perform more accurate diagnoses than doctors, so we should utilize it in these types of areas as partners to enhance human work. But it still can’t replace a doctor. Doctors can do much more, i.e., including critical bedside manner skills and treatment plans, only a conscious human can perform.

An MIT Media Lab study found that high daily use of ChatGPT is associated with increased loneliness, dependence, and decreased socialization, while another MIT study using EEG showed that using ChatGPT to write essays can led to decreased brain activity in areas linked to creativity and memory, suggesting it can contribute to "cognitive debt" and a decline in critical thinking skills.

It is hard to understand why anyone would acquiesce to a technology that regresses their own cognitive growth and human potential. Over-reliance on generative AI for quick summary answers, which do not help you authentically learn and retain, does not make you smarter; it makes you dumber!

From a 6ai Technologies perspective, generative AI is still a useful tool, but not the overhyped version of it.

Breakthroughs usually do not come from dramatic leaps and revelations, but rather from building upon what has already been discovered and taking from it what is useful to the task objectives you are pursuing.

This is what the six-step applied intelligence (6ai) process does: it doesn’t dismiss GenAI technology; it builds on its most useful functions, areas that can be partnered with to enhance human value. It offers a framework for users to engage with their challenges and ambitions through an authentic, well-defined, and disciplined bottom-up strategy development process that won't cost us the planet. This, we believe, is the most optimal use of GenAI technology.

6ai guides individuals to discover knowledge and develop strategies themselves. It is for those who want to maintain agency and seek to authentically learn, not chase quick and hallucinating summaries, i.e., ChatGPT and the other usual suspects.

6ai is diametrically different from LLM-based products and offers a focused alternative to LLM-based products.

It's a software tool for human progress, advancing users’ intellectual capabilities, empowering them to prioritize and contextualize information to gain better insights and turn them into winning strategies.

According to Einstein, useful innovation often comes through a process of discovery; a series of steps and within each progressive step, there must be additional steps of scientific inquiry, tests, contemplation and iterations to complete before moving to the next step. All steps must be covered!

Our six-step applied intelligence process ensures the integrity of the 6ai system, its overall reliability, performance and value.