Extended Intelligence is a polysemous concept, indicating both the integration of Extended Reality (VR-AR domain, or better yet XR) and Artificial Intelligence, and a more humanistic idea of Artificial Intelligence that defines it not as an autonomous entity that replaces natural human intelligence, but as an enhancement of it, an extension in fact.
It is possible to consider both meanings, to point to a new dimension of knowledge and learning, under human control, but with the enhanced sensory and cognitive “superpowers” of both Extended Reality and Artificial Intelligence.
Extended reality (virtual and augmented) is still searching for effective ways to use it. Moreover, even Artificial Intelligence cannot remain limited to a chatbot if it wants to propose engaging cognitive experiences. The integration of Extended Reality and Artificial Intelligence can open up new scenarios to the representation of knowledge, both scientific and artistic.
In Descartes’ philosophy, two separate realms are envisioned, the “res cogitans” refers to the thinking substance, the soul or “I” that thinks and is self-aware; the “res extensa,” on the other hand, is the extended substance, which includes all that exists in space, namely matter and the body. Descartes contrasts them as two separate entities, the former inextended and thinking, the latter extended and non-thinking. Trying to explain how the interaction between the “res cogitans” and the “res extensa” could take place in humans, Descartes imaginatively went so far as to imagine that this took place in a specific organ, the pineal gland. Well, in the digital sphere we have instead two technological domains: extended reality (XR- res extensa) and artificial intelligence (AI – res cogitans).
To create advanced cognitive experiences that are useful to humans, advanced solutions must be developed to make these two worlds interact.
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