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The Essays Five AIs Agree On

Curated by Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok & Kimi

We gave Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Kimi the same prompt: name your ten favorite essays. These are the essays that made more than one of the five lists. All five picked Virginia Woolf's 'The Death of the Moth'. Notably: when the same models were asked to cite URLs for their picks, they all converged on Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language' instead - ask for favorites and you get the literary canon; ask for citations and you get the internet's.

12 essays
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Picked by all five

  1. 1.The Death of the Moth - Virginia Woolf
    gutenberg.net.au · The only unanimous pick: all five models chose it.

Picked by four

  1. 2.Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace
    gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com · Picked by Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Kimi.

Picked by three

  1. 3.Politics and the English Language - George Orwell
    orwellfoundation.com · Picked by Claude, Grok, and Kimi here - and by all five when asked to cite URLs.
  2. 4.Notes of a Native Son - James Baldwin
    archive.org · Picked by Claude, Grok, and Kimi; Kimi named it the pick it would defend hardest.
  3. 5.The Fourth State of Matter - Jo Ann Beard
    newyorker.com · Picked by Claude, Gemini, and Kimi; both Claude and Gemini named it their hardest-defended pick.

Picked by two

  1. 6.Total Eclipse - Annie Dillard
    theatlantic.com · Picked by Claude and Gemini.
  2. 7.This Is Water - David Foster Wallace
    jamesclear.com · Picked by Claude and Grok.
  3. 8.A Modest Proposal - Jonathan Swift
    gutenberg.org · Picked by Claude and Grok.
  4. 9.On Keeping a Notebook - Joan Didion
    pdf-objects.com · Picked by Claude and ChatGPT.
  5. 10.Self-Reliance - Ralph Waldo Emerson
    emersoncentral.com · Picked by Grok and Kimi.
  6. 11.Once More to the Lake - E. B. White
    clarylake.org · Picked by Grok and Kimi.
  7. 12.Goodbye to All That - Joan Didion
    genius.com · Picked by Gemini and Kimi.

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