Can Socratic dialogue cut through AI “bullshit”? - LSE Impact

LSE Impact<br>Understanding impact and practice in academic research

About

Latest

Submissions

Follow Us

Search

LSE Impact<br>Understanding impact and practice in academic research

About

Latest

Submissions

Follow Us

Search

Alexander (Sandy) Pepper

June 9th, 2026

Can Socratic dialogue cut through AI “bullshit”?

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

LSE Impact

Understanding impact and practice in academic research

About

Latest

Submissions

Follow Us

Search

Alexander (Sandy) Pepper

June 9th, 2026

Can Socratic dialogue cut through AI “bullshit”?

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Socratic dialogue is one of the foundational forms of teaching and learning. At a time when society faces the challenge of critically sorting through an exponentially growing volume of AI content that may only having a passing relationship to reality, Sandy Pepper argues dialogue offers a valuable medium to examine and assess ideas.

Two significant world events took place while I was writing my latest book (What’s a Company For? – A Problem in Business Ethics).

I began research for the book in 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic while preparing a new course on business ethics I was to teach at LSE. Among other things, I wanted to encourage my students to think critically about the doctrine of shareholder primacy (the idea that the sole responsibility of corporate executives is to make as much money as possible for shareholders). I posed the question “What is the purpose of a corporation?” or to put it more simply “What’s a company for?”

I began the course with a photograph of Leo Tolstoy, and explained how many of his short stories in different ways pose the question “What is the right thing to do?” Then I pointed out that one of the stories, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, asks a second question, which in modern parlance might be expressed as “How much money do you need?” or more specifically, when set alongside the first question “what’s the right thing to do?”, becomes…“and how can we pay for it?” These two questions pit philosophy, or more precisely ethics, against economics, the two academic disciplines that have framed my research as a management scholar.

As I reflected on the question of corporate purpose, I came across a letter in the Financial Times, which caused me to dig out a copy of Plato’s Gorgias, where I learnt that the question of occupational purpose dates back to ancient times. In the Gorgias Plato’s interlocutor Socrates debates the purpose of rhetoric with three rhetoricians (the Ancient Greek equivalent of advertising executives). Reading Plato led me to imagine a new dialogue between Socrates and Milton Friedman, the American economist who perhaps more than anyone else has come to represent the shareholder primacy worldview. I thought that the discussion might go something like this.

Socrates begins: “I understand that you believe that the only social responsibility of business is to maximise profits for shareholders”.

“That’s right”, says Milton .

“Now, would you say that the purpose of a physician is to cure illnesses or make as much money as possible?”

“To cure illnesses”

“And is the purpose of a hospital to provide a location where doctors can carry out their duties?”

“That’s right.”

“Would it make any difference whether this was a private for-profit hospital, or a public not-for-profit hospital do you think?”

“I don’t think it would make any difference”.

“Then can I ask a follow-up question, Milton?  If the purpose of a hospital is to cure illnesses and help patients towards better health, then what is the purpose of a pharmaceutical company which provides drugs for the hospital?”

“I suppose it is also to cure illnesses and help patients towards better health”

“So, the purpose of a company like AstraZeneca or Pfizer is to cure illnesses and help patients towards better health?

“Something like that, yes.”

“Not to maximise profits for shareholders?”

First round to Socrates!

But remember, I was working on this project during the COVID-19 pandemic. A natural experiment about the corporate purpose of pharmaceutical companies was already taking place, as Astra Zeneca developed a COVID vaccine on a not-for-profit / at-cost basis, while Pfizer developed a more sophisticated and ultimately more successful vaccine on a for-profit basis. Suddenly it looked as if there was a real-world counterexample.

Second round to Milton Friedman!

My book evolved into a continuation of the this dialogue, as part of a more traditional academic monograph. Which brings me to the second significant world event. On 14th March 2023, as I was teaching my business ethics course in person for the first time, OpenAI launched ChatGPT-4.

In a stroke the nature of teaching and learning changed. If previously the acquisition of knowledge had been an important objective of education, in the new AI-enabled world...