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Bernard Cohen

Are you the kind of person who just likes to get it all off your chest? If not, could you be the kind of artificial intelligence that likes to output the full data load from your natural language processing spatial accelerator chip?
Perhaps we all need a good argument every now and again. You can say exactly what you think or “think”, enter into the spirit of disagreeableness, and at the end of it, get on with the rest of your less contradictory life or being. Once you’ve said your bit, it’s done.
In the Monty Python comedy sketch, a customer (played by Michael Palin) pays one pound for a decent five-minute argument, and is disgusted to receive a series of assertions and substanceless contradictions from John Cleese.
Customer: “I came here for a good argument.”
Service provider: “No you didn’t. You came here for an argument.”
Customer: “An argument is a collected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.”

My AI friend, in its list-making, freakily organised manner, agrees. It further contends that a good argument requires mutual respect. The AI’s model resembles any average high school debate.
“A good argument is like a well-crafted recipe,” it types, “requiring specific ingredients and steps to ensure it is effective and persuasive.”
This recipe, it says, comprises seven bullet-point ingredients, including credible evidence and expert opinions.
The AI claims to know quite a bit about credibility and respectful exchange: for example, it knows that the most cited statement supporting respectful exchange of views – Voltaire’s “I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – has no credibility. Voltaire never said it. (The source of the misattribution is The Friends of Voltaire [1906], by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.)
Voltaire, according to the AI, makes the top 10 of wrongly cited people, behind the most misquoted figures in history: Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Confucius. (It says that up to 70 per cent of Monroe quotes on the internet have no basis in fact.)
I try to persuade the AI to sound more passionate – a little more fun – in our argument about arguing. Show some temper, I suggest.
“Why do you think you know so much about arguing? You don’t even know what’s in your data set. You’re just a jumped-up Markov chainer,” I tell it (my insult referring to old chatbots that chose next words based only on the last word output). It tells me that abuse isn’t helpful. As evidence, it lays out its data list on debate and persuasion. At least one of the books in its bibliography does not exist.
Back in the middle of the 18th century, Voltaire did speak in defence of freedom of speech. Claude Adrien Helvetius’ treatise On Mind (1758) had been burned by the Sorbonne’s religious authorities for its atheism.
What Voltaire supposedly really did say about this: “What a fuss about an omelette.”


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Artificial intelligence

AI tells us what Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Confucius have in common, but is it right? How do we know? We get a little less reasonable

What’s the best way to win an argument? AI offers its ideas and we get awkward. Illustration: Bernard Cohen using Midjourney

And another thing … A man drives home his point. Photo: AI-generated image

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AI reckons up to 70 per cent of Monroe quotes are wrongly attributed while Voltaire’s quote about respectful disagreement is also dubious
Monty Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin discussed what makes a good argument in a popular 5-minute sketch


AI tells us what Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Confucius have in common, but is it right and how can it best argue its case?


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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


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Opinion | AI tells us what Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Confucius have in common, but is it right? How do we know? We get a little less reasonable

AI reckons up to 70 per cent of Monroe quotes are wrongly attributed while Voltaire’s quote about respectful disagreement is also dubious Monty Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin discussed what makes a good argument in a popular 5-minute sketch

AI reckons up to 70 per cent of Monroe quotes are wrongly attributed while Voltaire’s quote about respectful disagreement is also dubious

Monty Python’s John Cleese and Michael Palin discussed what makes a good argument in a popular 5-minute sketch