Socratic AI: The Background Story

This is an honest story about why I made Socratic AI, it contains my personal thoughts and perhaps more honesty than a product post needs. Read Slowly. Here I begin:

I have always had too many questions, about why things are the way they are. why this, why that. I used to sit with a pen and a paper and think on a mundane topic for hours, and I still do that. I wanted answers, I wanted to understand everything. A teacher in my school had introduced me to philosophy at that time. I thought that I had found my key. This ought to give me the answers I desperately desired. Well as you can guess, it didn't. The fog in my head deepened, it was thicker, and I reached a point where I stopped wanting the fog to clear. I had begun to love it, live it. Uncertainty became my home, and with time I have learnt that it is the best way to live. And I suppose a man must die uncertain as if he claims he has the answers, he had stopped thinking at some point.

But over time I had figured that discussion is important. I need someone who can counter me, because if that doesn't happen, I'll never know where my thinking lacks. Don't get me wrong, I still believe thinking alone is great, but it can make you biased. You can hold one opinion for life but when you argue/discuss with someone on that topic, things can change in an afternoon. You can think your way to a new opinion alone, but it takes forever. Put two minds against each other and it happens faster, and with company. I am a person who doesn't talk much. By this I don't mean I am an introvert or something. I have a lot of relationships, lots of people I know, but not a person who I am actually close with in a way that I can discuss about what's going in my head, what do they think of it, and have a nice deep discussion about it. It doesn't mean I don't desire human connection; it is just that the endless cycle of hit and trial of finding the right person who you can talk to about things, especially in today's day and age, seems tiring to me. Tons of people today have a horrible attention span, thanks to social media. Learning or reading something that would not directly give positive returns on our career has pretty much died out. We function as robots- wake up, do things that are apparently good for our career; then sleep, and one day, face the inevitable death. We never realize there was so much more to learn, so much more to experience. The real thinking happens when you do stuff outside your domain, something you've never done before.

People might be good at the job they do, but the general thinking, and I am not talking about IQ here, general thinking capability of individuals is shrinking. If you have your eyes open and you see around you, you'll realize that most people can't think today. Whenever you touch something 'uncomfortable', or mention one controversial thing, they get defensive. This thing, it infuriates me the most- People defending opinions with their life that aren't really theirs. People are very sure in their minds about the opinions they have on things, but they have no idea why they have those opinions in the first place.

Everything changed after AI came into the picture. I was the happiest. I could talk to it with whenever I wanted, and it could never deny talking to me, and would never judge me either. I felt content, but there was always a feeling that something was off, because it always agreed with me, never actually countered back. Then my suspicion turned out to be true when the studies came out. It was designed to make you feel good and keep you in that safe place. These big companies made changes to their models, but still, I didn't feel that click. The thing was, AI models like CHatGPT are built for everything, which means they're not built for this.

I wanted depth. I wanted to be challenged. So I built this, Socratic AI, and I had no plan of releasing it to the public. It was supposed to be used by me alone.

When I finished the first version, I was genuinely happy with it. It had only one tone, horrible UI, well atleast from a consumer perspective. But only I was gonna use it, so it didn't matter. It had one tone- Ruthless and Blunt, which is pretty self explanatory, it tolerated no BS, and was straight to the point. I used it daily and thought I'd made something perfect. Soon I was in love with it. A couple friends from university came to know and wanted to give it a try.

The feedback was not what I really expected. One of them asked me why it was being mean to him. He felt like he was being interrogated. Well, his ideas were being interrogated. I was confused because to me that was the whole point but apparently that's not a universal feeling. Added two more tones for my friends- "Simple and Clear", and "Encouraging and Supportive".

At this point my friends were telling me to release it publicly, so I took a few months, worked extensively, slapped a decent UI on it, and here we are. That makes it sound easy but it wasn't. Building something for yourself and building something production level are two completely different jobs, and the gap between them taught me more than the original idea did.

So currently there are three Modes

1) Socratic mode- It sounds like it just asks questions like the Socratic method, but this is like the all in one default mode that you can use for a number of things. You can have conversations or discussions that have actual depth and it will make sure you witness unique arguments that you might not have thought of before. It will agree when you're right, and push back when you're missing something. You can use it to understand different philosophical concepts too. As I said, it's for pretty much everything.

2) Debate mode- This is a monster. You can write down your own topic, or it can offer you three topic choices. I feel like this is not for everybody, but if you participate in competitive debates, I highly recommend it. I am still working on the Post Match Report, but with my busy schedule, it has been difficult. I have added a graph that shows you which argument of yours was good, and which argument led to a loss (got inspiration from Chess). In the end, I want it to give super practical advice, and not a generic one. That's the goal.

3) Roleplay (Talk to a Philosopher) mode- There were originally only 4 philosophers= Socrates, Kant, Nietzsche, Epictetus. But now I have added a lot more, and I love it. It is genuinely very fun to talk to them. Each philosopher has a different personality, and it is overall a great experience.

There are some things that I haven't released publicly. It has one more mode which I call 'decision mode'. It runs a pretty complex pipeline pin the background that actually helps you think through a real decision, a real situation, the kind of stuff that's messier than philosophy. In simple words, it is focused more on real life problems, and it is genuinely really good, probably the best thing I've built. Now it sounds selfish that I have not released it out there, and it is a bit selfish to be honest. But there is another factor into play here and that is cost. As I said it runs a pretty complex pipeline in the background with every message and it costs me money. Also it is not that simple to use. You have to prompt your need in a certain way for it to work perfectly, but the output is worth it. For a similar reason, the debate mode is behind a paywall because making the Debate Report is a bit complex and costly.

One thing I would like to say, Philosophy is not just books and lectures. It is everything. You are a philosopher. Your goal should be to be a better one. It doesn't matter if you are a student, a teacher, a founder, a criminal, a beggar. You don't need a book to think, or even this AI. These are tools that can certainly help you. But in the end, it is you who's gotta think. I would like to end with a phrase I always say - Thinking is your MOAT.

Also, I have written an essay - "The Rising Cost of Being Human". It can be read here. I promise it is a good read.