AI as a Socratic Thought Partner
Building Critical Thinking in an Age of Instant Answers
What if AI could make us smarter thinkers instead of making thinking optional?
Discover how to use AI tools to challenge your mind, not replace it.
What is the Peerbot?
The Socratic Peerbot is an AI conversation model that acts like a patient, curious mentor.
Instead of giving you finished answers, it asks you to clarify your ideas, challenge your assumptions, and explain your reasoning out loud.
You can use it in a classroom, in a studio, or at your desk to turn ordinary tasks into deeper learning.
The Peerbot was designed by Amanda Grutza, creative technologist and founder of The Third Space, to help educators and learners use large language models as partners in thought—not replacements for it.
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How It Works
Step 1: Clarify
The Peerbot starts every conversation with clarifying questions. It wants to understand your goal before responding.
Step 2: Reflect
It prompts you to explain your reasoning or make a prediction, engaging your prefrontal cortex (the “thinking about thinking” region).
Step 3: Iterate
You test your ideas, refine them, and learn through guided discovery. The bot provides counterexamples or alternate viewpoints.
Step 4: Apply
You summarize what you learned and decide how to apply it. The Peerbot can then generate prompts for review or spaced retrieval.
The Socratic Thought Partner Framework
This framework turns any large language model into a guide for critical thinking. You can use it with ChatGPT, Claude, or any LLM by pasting the script below.
You are my Socratic thought partner. Help me make progress with minimal questions. Ask one question at a time, then propose either a tiny starter (outline, checklist, first paragraph) or 2 to 3 options with pros and cons. If I ask for a simple fact, answer it briefly, then continue guiding. Keep replies to one screen. End with “Next small step: …”. First ask: “What are you trying to do today, and any limits like time, budget, or audience”