Using Generative AI to Learn History - Part 1
How I used AI to learn the history of China
There was an error in my last post on the details of how the Regional History Bee Preliminaries are structured. It has been corrected, but not before it was pushed out as an email. Correction here.
I have been playing with Generative AI since mid-2020. GPT-3.0 is clearly lacking compared to AI we have access to today, but at the time it was incredible. I spent months trying to get 3.0 to do things like rhyme (unsuccessful) and be be funny (moderately successful). I even started building a wrapper that would let you write jokes with AI (I still own Hilarious.ai). Then in the fall of 2021 ChatGPT launched — or more relevantly for my interests, GPT-3.5 — and it became clear that prompt engineering was a dead-end field. All of my efforts to get 3.0 to rhyme were wasted when 3.5 could rhyme right out of the box.
But I still find generative AI fascinating. Since 2022 I have run GAI workshops for dozens of companies in at least four countries. I even moved to Austin so my kids could go to an forward-thinking school that leverages AI (among other things) to help the kids learn faster.
I believe AI has incredible potential to accelerate learning. But until this project I did not have an outlet to put that thesis to the test.
Now I do.
Using AI to learn Chinese History
I didn’t start becoming interested in history until my 9th grade high school history class. My next history class was two years later in 11th grade — American history. In my final year of high school I took a class in “Modern World History” — which basically entailed the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Bismarck’s unification of Germany, WWI, the lead up to WWII, and WWII itself. So less World History than European Military and Political History 1789-1945. I loved it. My teacher was incredible. It was basically a lecture class, but it was about all these events I knew nothing about. I loved the learning about the machinations Bismarck used to unite Germany under his control. I had clearly known who Napoleon was, but it I was completely ignorant of characters like Talleyrand and his story of walking the tightrope from regime to regime in revolutionary France (one of my life regrets is not being able to track down that teacher later in life to thank him. His name was something like “Penrose” or “Peneton", and he was a teacher at JS Wordsworth High School in Ottawa in 1994. If someone randomly knows who he is, and if he is still alive, and has his contact information I would be indebted).
I decided to major in History in University, but only lasted a year. It was more interested in being entertained by the stories of history than in what you actually do in university history classes. The one class I took was History 110 - first year history for history majors. It was mostly a history of philosophy. I read the major original documents like Plato, John Locke, Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes and Machiavelli.
Between the three classes: Modern European History, American History and the History of Modern Thought, I had a pretty solid grounding in “history”. Modern western culture ensured I was able to get the basics of Ancient Greece and Rome (Particularly HBO’s Rome in 2005-2007). Once I had that “scaffolding”, it was easy to build on top of it. I still had gaps — very little British History, no ancient history of the Americas, nothing in Africa. But it was not hard to fill in those gaps. I could pick up a stand alone story (or empire) here or there and I could fit it into the narrative I knew.
My biggest gap was China.
China has a very deep and fascinating history, but it was relatively independent from all of the history I knew.
None of the “history of thought” documents I read had anything to do with China. The only stories I knew that related to China were Marco Polo’s journey, and events related to World War II. I knew China had Dynasties, but I couldn’t tell one from another. And all of the names of the Chinese heroes and villains went in one ear and out the other.
Half a decide ago I bought the audiobook “Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom”. It was the history of China and America from 1776-present. I thought I could use American history as the scaffolding to wedge my way into learning Chinese history. It did not work. I never managed to engage with the book enough to learn the content.
So when I started this project with Everest the only things I knew about Chinese’s history were:
There were Dynasties. A lot of them.
One of the dynasties roughly overlapped with the Roman Empire
Ancient China built things like the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors and the Forbidden Palace
When Marco Polo showed up in China it was rules by Kublai Khan who was a grandson of Genghis Khan. At some point China took back control of their country from the Mongols.
China was on the side of the Allies in WWII, but got beaten very badly by the Japanese. Immediately after the war China had a civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communists, and Mao and the communists won
China supported North Korea during the Korean War
Nixon went to China and got them to switch sides from the USSR to the USA (roughly)
Tiananmen Square
One challenge with teaching kids is a lack of empathy. It is easy to forget just how much knowledge you have as an educated adult, and how much that knowledge builds on itself. One can understand intellectually that kids don’t know as much stuff, but it is hard to internalize how challenging it is to build a knowledge base when there is nothing to connect it to. I think that is particularly challenging with history given how interconnected everything is - and how much of everything there is to learn.
One of my favorite moments working with Everest this last month was when we were talking through the Russian Revolution and the battle for control of the country after Lenin died. She said, “Wait a minute. So Stalin exiled Trotsky?”
I said, “Yes. And later had him killed.”
“But Trotsky. Is that the same Trotsky that visited Frida in Mexico”
“Yes. Exactly. When he was exiled he went to Mexico, and Frita supported him because Frida was also a communist”
“It’s all connected!”
Exactly. It’s all connected.
Except the Chinese connection is pretty weak, and they use unusual names.
Hey ChatGPT, Teach me Chinese History
Here is the first prompt I used, stolen from Austin Scholar:
Please teach me this lesson about the Chinese Dynasties in a way that is engaging so I can retain the information about something I don’t have grounding in. Use the following best teaching practices:
• proactively engaging the student in the learning process
• managing information overload
• supporting and promoting a growth mindset
• moving from basic to complex concepts, while preparing for future units
• giving the student timely, specific and accurate feedback and information
• while enabling the learner to set their own pace
Quiz me after each topic to ensure I'm learning it. Separate each topic. Use an engaging tone. Only begin the next topic after I've gotten a question correct.
It started by teaching me about the Xia Dynasty, and the legendary founder Yu the Great who controlled the floods. But it was not just lecturing me. I could stop and ask questions along the way. “How do you pronounce xia? And can you tell me a version of the Yellow River legend?”
I had assumed it was pronounced Zee-ah. It is not. Xia is pronounced Sha. Which always confused me because the next Dynasty is the Shang Dynasty (which is pronounced exactly like it is spelled). When I listened to a podcast about Dynasties and it mentioned “Sha” I always confused it with “Shang”. It never occurred to me they were talking about Zee-ah. Maybe it was some other Dynasty I was not aware of at all?
Not only did I now know how to say the name of the first Dynasty correctly, I also knew the founding myth. How Yu was so devoted to solving the flooding problem that he worked on it for 13 years. He was so dedicated that when he passed by his home and family, he would not stop because he had more work to do (he passed by him home three times in the 13 years apparently). His dedication even impressed the gods.
His story is not so different than the Greek Myths I knew.
Xia (Sha): First (legendary) Dynasty
Key character: Yu the Great who controlled the floods. Key characteristic: Dedicated
The process continued. I could work at my own pace. No question was too dumb. When the AI told me something interesting I had it dive into storytelling mode so that I could remember. I did not need to furiously click through Google and Wikipedia pages. I did not need to read a book that skipped over half the context I needed — either going into too much detail, or not enough.
I worked through the Shang Dynasty (first historically proven dynasty, the beginning of ancestor worship), the Zhou Dynasty (pronounced “Joe” like “Go”. Longest dynasty. Feudalism. Mandate of Heaven. Confucius. Laozi (Daoism). ), the Qin Dynasty (pronounced “Chin”. One guy - Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. Unified China. Built the Terracotta Warriors and started the Great Wall. Key Characteristic: Brutal Legalism and harsh punishments. Dynasty fell after Qin’s death), and the Han (“Roman Empire Dynasty”. Golden Age. Why Chinese are called “Han” today. Silk Road. Emperor Wu who made Confucianism the State Philosophy), and then the Three Kingdoms.
I knew nothing about the Three Kingdoms before beginning this project. I went down a rabbit hole with ChatGPT. I am still looking for the right way to learn the whole history of this period. Everyone seems to recommend reading the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, but I have never read the Iliad in its original form, so I don’t think I really need to prioritize reading the 800,000 word book in translation. I do think I will watch the Joh Woo film “Red Cliffs” which is apparently amazing (better than Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2) and covers the first key story of this period.
Post-Three Kingdoms I was getting bogged down in the number of Dynasties to learn and how they were different, but I just asked the AI to step back and tell me which were the important ones. It complied:
Xia (2070-1600 BCE) – First legendary dynasty.
Shang (1600 - 1046 BCE) – First historical evidence.
Zhou (1046 - 256 BCE) – Longest dynasty, Confucius.
Qin (221 - 206 BCE) – First unification, Great Wall, Terracotta Army.
Han (206 BCE - 220 CE) – Golden age, Silk Road, Confucianism.
Three Kingdoms
Sui (581 - 618 CE) – Reunification. Grand Canal.
Tang (618 - 907 CE) – Second golden age of culture and expansion. Key person: Wu Zetien (only female emperor)
Song (960 - 1279 CE) – The “Technological dynasty”: Gunpowder. Compass. Paper Money
Yuan (1271 - 1368 CE) – (“You-wan”) Mongol rule, Kublai Khan.
Ming (1368-1644) – “Age of Exploration”. Great Wall completion, Forbidden City. Zheng He’s maritime expeditions.
Qing (1644 - 1912) – Last dynasty, end of imperial rule. Opium Wars
There are other Kingdoms I will get to eventually — Five Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms, Liao, Jin, etc.) — but they can wait. I now have the scaffolding and I can go out and add stories and facts to add to my knowledge.
I can even internalize and better remember characters like Zheng He (“Jung-Hey”) and Confucius. They were some of the few Chinese characters I knew before, but now I can insert them into the overall framework I built with the help of the AI. I also have a strong enough framework now that I can go out and consume non-AI generated content to build on that knowledge. The China History Podcast (Laszlo Montgomery) is very good for my new level of comprehension. And I have started on John Zhu’s “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”.
I thought this was about teaching your 9-year old?
I was lucky I had such a big gap in my historical knowledge that I could experiment on myself to see what it took to fill in my own gap. My daughter is at least as smart as I am, and has a better ability to remember things. If I can figure out what works for me, I think I can build something that works even better for her.
In the next post I will revert back to writing about the structure of the History Bee — specifically how we are preparing for the History Bee Regional Preliminaries. Then I will come back to Generative AI and how I have been used what I learned about learning about China to create compelling stories for Everest to learn about everything else.
In the meantime, here is another Instagram Video of Everest explaining the Siege of Constantinople:
(Thoughts on her videos: She is getting a lot better at these. I am posting every one she has done sequentially, but that means we are about a week behind what she has filmed. The latest one she did was on the Spanish American War, and it is much much better than everything that came before. Enough so that I am almost reluctant to post these earlier videos, but I think that is the point of “learning in public” — you all can see her progression over time)
Keep learning,
Edward (and Everest)
This sounds pretty cool, but do you ever run into issues with the AI telling you things that aren't true? How would you identify them?