The Slaves of Calvisius Sabinus

The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca tells the story of a wealthy Roman named Calvisius Sabinus who wanted to appear educated but kept mixing up his references. Odysseus instead of Achilles, and stuff like that. His solution? Buy special-purpose slaves. One trained in Homer, one in Hesiod, one for each poet. At dinner parties, they'd feed him lines to repeat.

It didn't work. One guest quipped that Sabinus should take up wrestling. When Sabinus protested he was too frail, the guest replied: "Maybe, but consider how many healthy slaves you have."

I found this in Ryan Holiday's recent book Wisdom Takes Work (original source). Surprisingly, Holiday makes no mention of AI. But isn't this exactly how people come across when they outsource all their thinking to it? If you post something sharp but it's pure AI, what exactly did you provide?

This is different from using AI as support rather than substitute. Nobody would have mocked Sabinus for using learned slaves as tutors. The distinction matters: Are you building capability, or just renting the appearance of it?