Video Abstract
Ever since they began chipping stones and stretching ropes to shoot arrows, Homo Sapiens have always used technology as an extension of their natural faculties.
The dialectic between human societies and their technological extensions marked the transitions between the eras of prehistory and history: hunting, agriculture, urbanization, industry, and the information society. These epochal transitions have been marked by social conflicts, even dramatic ones, but in the end they have led humanity to increase the level of its well-being and the length and quality of its life.
Today we are facing the challenge of Artificial Intelligence, which could lead us to a new anthropological dimension, far from obvious, that we want to call “Homo Extensus.”
This definition alludes to the desire to create not an Artificial Intelligence of machines, but rather an “Extended Intelligence,” that is, an extension of human intellectual faculties.
Considering what emerges from the history of previous cognitive technologies, and assessing the risks and opportunities of Artificial Intelligence, we now try to project ourselves into the vision of a future dimension of Extended Intelligence.
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