Leonardo’s intelligence is in more ways than one a model for extended intelligence, an emblematic case in which humans have evidently overcome previous cognitive limitations. Leonardo da Vinci’s genius is a universal icon for the vision of Homo Extensus.
In the drawings and paintings of the Florentine genius we recognize his incessant research, which spans countless areas of knowledge. We do not know Leonardo’s face: tradition attributes a famous portrait to him as an old man, but no one is certain it is him. If his physical form is unknown to us, the shape of his mind is instead still before us, its workings recorded punctually, daily in his drawings and works. Drawing, one of the oldest activities of Homo Sapiens, based on eye-hand coordination, is the central activity of Leonardo’s intelligence, and it takes on new strength in the age of artificial intelligence.
In his drawings Leonardo continually moves from topic to topic, even in the same sheet, following the whirlwind development of his thoughts. It thus becomes possible even today to take a journey into one of the most vast, most multifaceted, most beautiful minds that ever inhabited our planet. His pictorial masterpieces are moments of synthesis of his ideas, of the acquisitions of a life as an insatiable scholar and inventor. In Leonardo’s codices we perceive various forms of intelligence and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Leonardo uses drawing not only to represent nature, but also to design: here is the inventor, the engineer capable of imagining a new world, of devising flying machines, boats of all kinds, mechanisms. This “omo sanza lettere”-poor in literary training and thus freer than other intellectuals from the conditioning of his age-was able to single-handedly chart a unique route to knowledge. Will it be possible to transpose the model of Leonardo’s intelligence into the age of artificial intelligence? The extraordinary and unique multidisciplinarity of Leonardo’s mind could be accessible to everyone today with the support of artificial intelligence, which offers us all human knowledge in a conversational and generative form. Leonardo’s synapses, which in the masterpieces admirably connect and synthesize notions drawn from different disciplines, could be a model for the new conformation of the “extended” human mind. But his critical thinking and penchant for direct verification, which led him to dissect corpses, even to the point of first drawing a child in the fetal position, is also an interesting model for Homo Extensus. Multidisciplinarity for Leonardo is also “multimodality,” that is, the ability to express himself in different media: painting, music, sculpture, architecture. A unique characteristic in his day, which has become much more feasible today thanks to multimodal generative artificial intelligence. Finally, Leonardo’s propensity to turn his gaze and study to the future, revolutionary for his time and evident in the multiple designs of his codices, is a further intellectual trait to be studied and set as a relevant goal for the formation of the human mind in the age of AI.
Italiano