<p>This episode is a little different. It's an interview with an A.I. of Sir John A. Macdonald.</p><p>So what does that mean? Well, it means that I gathered up the transcripts for all the House of Commons Debates for every year that Macdonald was Prime Minister, and threw in a few other historical resources as well. I processed those and made them available to a large language model, similar to the one that powers ChatGPT. Then I instructed that large language model to answer all of my questions as though it were Sir John A. Macdonald, using those historical resources I provided for reference.</p><p>The result is this interview you're about to hear. </p><p>If you want to ask John A. Macdonald some questions of your own, you can do so here: <a href="https://sirjohnai.longformnorth.com/" target="_blank">sirjohnai.longformnorth.com</a></p><p>All the historical resources I used are listed there as well.</p><p>(Note: The idea for this episode was partly inspired by Tyler Cowen who used ChatGPT to record an interview with Jonathan Swift. You can check out that interview <a href="https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/jonathan-gpt-swift/" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p> <p><p>For more about the podcast, check out the website: <a href="https://longformnorth.com/" target="_blank">longformnorth.com</a></p><p>Music by Aaron Barth</p><p>Hosted and produced by Ian Van Harten</p></p>