A Brief History of Time - AI Style

My wife and I are trying a new approach to a book club and incorporating AI.

There are some books that we (both) have that we have tried to read, read part of, or never really go going on. Our choice of book is something of interest, but we experienced friction / lack of motivation, and never started / finished it. We are hoping that this new approach will create a better understanding of the book than we would get from just reading cover to cover.

We are "reading" them using the LLM of our choosing, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. and it goes something like this. Hey ChatGPT, give me a summary of chapter 1 of "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. We read the output and then we use our curiosity to explore further. For instance, some of my follow up questions were...

• 
  How well did Ptolemy’s model work? Was it 100%. Why did it take so long to get to the heliocentric model?
• What is the notion of predictive power in scientific theory. Why is it important? What is the most influential / significant use of it?
• How is the age of the universe calculated? How has it evolved over time?
• How can everything be moving away from each other but still galaxies collide?
• What is the force of gravity that our galaxy and the andromeda galaxy exert on one other? Which exerts more force on the other? Are either gravitationally bound to other galaxies?
• How can I envision dark matter? Is it clustered together in different places, like puffy clouds. Or is it spread out like fog over vast areas? Is it moving? Can we indirectly see dark matter outside of its gravitational pull, like lensing?

After asking more questions I wrapped up with...

Is there any concept in the first chapter of brief history of time that we haven’t explored in our conversation here?

Which led me to ask a bunch of other questions. This continued for about an hour. I already read the first half of the book, and it covers topics I already have a little understanding of. This approach allowed me to explore in different nooks and crannies that I probably just took at face value when I originally read the book. This approach feels somehow...better. I am not just reading the words but also thinking about them and trying to understand deeper and/or map them to my world view.

The next step after both of us have wrapped up independently exploring a given chapter is that we discuss it together - like a book club. What did you find interesting? Surprising? Don't quite get yet? Did you explore areas that have little or nothing to do with the book (squirrels)? I expect our discussion to be "interesting" in that we come at things from different angles; I am more the analytical/science person, and she is much more the spirit/artist.

There is also the side benefit (not to be underestimated) of doing something together to keep things interesting. Stay tuned.