The cognitive designer of extended intelligence

A huge number of experts, programmers, linguists, logicians are engaging in the design and development of Artificial Intelligence technologies.

The colossal industrial, commercial, financial, and media interest related to AI has attracted resources and attention worldwide.

However, while everyone is thinking about the intelligent machine, the dimension of Extended Intelligence, the result of a future creative reaction of human intelligence in interaction with artificial intelligence, is still little explored. This dialectical movement governed by human intelligence could fundamentally change human intelligence itself, just as has happened in the past with other cognitive technologies.

It is not enough to design technologies that enhance artificial intelligence: we need to focus on technologies that elevate human intelligence, making it capable of controlling artificial intelligence so that it is not in turn enslaved by artificial intelligence.

The cognitive designer is a designer of digital applications and cognitive methodologies, active on both fronts, not only on AI, but also on humans and the extension of their capabilities.

Cognitive design is therefore applied first and foremost on the technologies and methodologies of learning, and of complex cognitive processes, e.g., creative, design or predictive activities.

Homo Extensus must focus its research in the construction of extended intelligence processes and experiences, in various fields, starting from education–which requires a new pedagogy and range of techno-methodologies–to the sciences, the arts, philosophy, the domains of economics, the humanities and the new professions.

Just as the alphabet made philosophical intelligence possible, and the camera activated the figure of the contemporary artist, so we need to design the new intellectual faculties and cultural forms of Homo Extensus.

Extended intelligence should not be limited to state-of-the-art knowledge before AI: instead, it must address new problems and processes that are particularly complex and not easily solved without the support of AI models.

Knowledge design is probably the highest creative skill of Homo Extensus.