Homo Extensus can and should move beyond the dominant approach of the most popular generative AI models, which risk promoting an uncritical use of AI based on a dangerous monologic and oracular effect. Typically, systems such as ChatGPT or Gemini tend to provide a single answer, which may be perceived by a naive user as the only or best one.
To avoid these risks, we need to design a responsible, creative, pluralistic and critical adoption of AI.
The artificial symposium model stems from the idea of not having the AI generate a single answer, but of producing and comparing multiple opinions from the simulation of multiple authoritative sources. In philosophical culture, the symposium is an intellectual conversation between people of culture: examples of symposia were the school of Athens or the Enlightenment literary café. In the artificial symposium an Artificial Intelligence model is trained to process in Machine Learning ideas and opinions inspired by the thought of famous authors, for example philosophers, politicians or inventors of the past. The effect is then to be able to compare multiple opinions, from a pluralistic perspective, and subject them to critical reflection. The artificial symposium will be able to accommodate more topics and more debates, developing a progressive critical control of artificial intelligence. The Artificial Symposium is an application of cognitive design that can be incorporated into a teaching methodology, that of “debate” which is based on organized debates among students. In the critical confrontation of Artificial Symposia we will be able to analyze cognitive biases, that is, the distortions and prejudices that can be produced by artificial intelligence, but also easily develop a pluralistic attitude that counteracts the monological effects of algorithms.
The Homo Extensus, in addition to being able to compare the opinion of different points of view of the culture of the past, will also have an AI-simulated council of sages and experts of the present world with whom to converse to acquire opinions, formulate plans, and to make decisions.
The artificial board model can be applied in a variety of contexts, from the political context in which it replicates the assembly of a democratic body, to the corporate context in which boards are convened, to consulting firms, technical committees or think tanks that rely on teams of advisors.
Thus, let us imagine a decision maker of the future, such as a CEO or mayor, who before developing a project or making a decision can virtually convene a council of world-class experts, submit a topic to them, receive opinions drafted by the AI in base, even put a motion to a vote. After hearing and analyzing the opinions of the artificial council, it will still be up to him to make a decision, taking responsibility for it.
Today no public or private entity can afford to convene a council with the world’s leading experts, yet this faculty can easily be simulated by Homo Extensus.
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