Alexa in the Garden of Epicurus

REMINDER: SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - January 11, 2026 -12:30 PM EDT - Ancient text study and discussion: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius - Level 03 members and above -- Line 127 - read the new update.

    Certainly, there are a lot of potential downsides to AI, some dangerous, as has been pointed out in this thread, but the technology isn't going ANYWHERE except more sophisticated, and we are going to have to learn to deal with it. There is also an upside in it being a tool for creativity, inspiration and information.

    It's being developed all over the world, not just in the US. Even if we shut it down here, it's still coming.

    As in the early days of the internet, there was the dot.com bubble, and fortunes were made and lost. So it is with AI right now. Bubble or no, we still have the internet. Amazon was famous in the '90's for being this big thing that never made any money. :) It's making money now.

    I generally agree with your last post Dave, but I think it’s important to note that there’s a difference between conscious skepticism (which I agree is healthy), and not being able to trust anything. The latter is the issue being discussed here.

    🎉⚖️

    Quote from Cassius

    If there's not already one, there almost certainly will be. And that's going to put the ball in the court of those who think that the available Epicurus-bots aren't the place to get info about Epicurus

    Quote from Pacatus

    Who wants a GPT Epicurus? =O


    Cassius if you would like interacting with a preliminary Epicurus-AI, I have built a philosophy persona (amongst a few other personas, e.g. Golf Coach) that has over 400 documents and articles on philosophy, mostly related to epicurean thoughts. I have been using Personal.AI as the tool to create a Personal/Small Language Model dataset. This is the expected usage for many businesses to build AI queries around limited, specialized data sets of reliable info.

    I use it to help me remember previously reviewed info, and carry out interesting comparisons of different authors viewpoints. I use the web version to manage the input of info, and find the mobile app version to be my pocket guide to ask WWES (What Would Epicurus Say), when faced with interesting choice or avoidance situations.

    LMK if you ever want to build an AI query screen with access to only the knowledge contained on EpicureanFriends.com or other similarly managed epicurean websites. Then you could offer the public a way to ‘talk to’ Epicurus. 😀

    Patrikios

    Yes, Patikios, I think that is coming whether we like it or not. There will eventually be many competing models of Epicurus out there. I presume that means that the task will be not to simply provide the model with raw texts, but also to provide it with "instructions" on how to interpret them. There will eventually be Stoic-friendly Epicuruses, Buddhist-friendly Epicurus, etc just like there are no many different websites and takes on Epicurus.

    Thanks for the offer of your experience so far. I'll message you on what you have done so far but if you and others will keep a watch out for other Epicurus AI engines that are already public and post about them here I will appreciate it.

Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com

Here is a list of suggested search strategies:

  • Website Overview page - clickable links arrranged by cards.
  • Forum Main Page - list of forums and subforums arranged by topic. Threads are posted according to relevant topics. The "Uncategorized subforum" contains threads which do not fall into any existing topic (also contains older "unfiled" threads which will soon be moved).
  • Search Tool - icon is located on the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere."
  • Search By Key Tags - curated to show frequently-searched topics.
  • Full Tag List - an alphabetical list of all tags.