Introduction

How willhuman intelligence evolve with the advent ofArtificial Intelligence?

TheHomo Extensus vision aims to answer this question from an original perspective that is different from those who produce and promote AI technologies, but also alternative to emerging theories that predict doomsday scenarios.

The basic idea is that humans will be able and able to respond to this powerful cognitive technology by developing what we call “extendedintelligence,” that is, human intelligence enhanced by interaction with artificial intelligence, through the introduction of new educational methodologies, scientific research, artistic creations, and the application of appropriate technological solutions in all areas of knowledge and practical and professional activities.

Therefore, Homo Extensus is not an abstract vision, but is intended to be an interdisciplinary and shared laboratory that aims to develop innovative ideas aimed at enhancing human intellectual faculties from a humanistic perspective that provides for the critical control and enhancement of AI.

Some traits of the new intelligence of Homo Extensus can already be vaguely sensed by analyzing the first experiences emerging from the interaction of humans with the applications of Artificial Intelligence available today: generative AI, for example, is making possible a new form of multimodal creativity, that is, one that allows a single creative person to generate images, music, videos while not having acquired specific technical skills. A single individual will soon be able to create a Hollywood colossal, a TV commercial, a video game, playing the role of the dozens of specialists engaged in these productions today.

Reasoning and planning, typical faculties of the human mind, can be greatly enhanced by interactive dialogue with evolved conversational models, which allow for progressive refinement of ideas, documentation and argumentation of new insights.

AI can help us make decisions in the political, business or medical spheres by offering comparison in artificial symposia or councils, in which humans can meet philosophers and thinkers from the past or the best experts in the world today, whose ideas and opinions are reconstructed and mediated by Artificial Intelligence itself.

The probabilistic faculties of AI can provide Homo Extensus with new predictive capabilities that are very important for meeting the challenges of the future. We will be able to easily develop simulations of economic or social scenarios that will help us better understand how to avoid the negative effects of our actions and instead achieve positive outcomes.

With the new operational and organizational capabilities of Artificial Intelligence, a single human will be able to invent new startups in different fields, or still be able to fulfill tasks that today can only be taken on and completed by a large company.

The incredible potential of Artificial Intelligence also makes it available to artists to develop an “Ars Extensa,” drawing on the entire imagination of humanity and creating works hitherto inconceivable.

Contemporary art can also aspire to perform an unprecedented intellectual task: to represent Artificial Intelligence itself, through new forms of visualizing the universal “world of ideas” that is emerging from AI models, which translate and compare the words and images thought of and used by humanity.

Homo Extensus is then a fundamental model in education, which must aim to extend human intelligence and certainly not artificial intelligence: in education, it is basic for the educational community to know how to use appropriate methodologies and technological platforms, designed to recognize and avoid the risks of digital and AI, while enhancing its resources.

Advances in AI mean that senses can also be “extended” through devices, detectors and processing, providing valuable supports for people with sensory and cognitive impairments; this will be a socially important strand of AI development.

It is hoped here that the idea of Extended Intelligence can guide the proper design of Artificial Intelligence solutions, which should be aimed at serving and not replacing humans as well as directed at both reducing the risks inherent in the use of new technologies and increasing their opportunities.

Hence, the vision of Homo Extensus should not be taken as an academic treatment of scientific subject matter already established in precise form, but as an object of philosophical research, as a drive for the theoretical, technological and artistic design of a new intellectual dimension.

Homo Extensus does not end and resolve between the lines of a theoretical treatise, but initiates a laboratory of Innovation Design, open to interdisciplinary contributions and committed to the creation of new forms of culture, art, education, and applied technology.

In several passages it is pointed out that this phase of historical transformation is not without risks, and in fact some of the relevant issues related to the advent of AI are described: among them is the risk of mental atrophy, that is, the reduction in intellectual capacity resulting from the diminishing use of the brain.

The book also highlights the psychological turmoil associated with the deceptive identity of a machine posing as a man, thus realizing what Alan Turing had called the “Imitation Game” and which can cause serious consequences especially in children and fragile people.

Social, Web and AI can degenerate into “weapons of mass distraction,” negatively impacting learning and skill acquisition by the younger generation.

In the field of labor, then, you point out that we are facing a new industrial revolution which, like previous ones, will have a major impact on companies and employment: the speed with which artificial intelligence and robotics will transform society puts at risk many professional activities, which must rapidly evolve and upgrade.

New professions will need to be imagined, created and organized, driven by the profound revolutions taking place. This is one of the most challenging fronts, an area that will have to be supported by developing and applying training solutions in all fields, real laboratories of the professions of the future supported by the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Another issue being laid bare is that of fake news, unbalanced biases, and widespread algorithms in social media, which already put democracy and social harmony at risk. As if that were not enough, there are also risks from AI errors, not only in the form of the daily hallucinations of ChatGPT and other chatbots, but especially in the potential malfunctions of complex systems that run vital technological infrastructures or – even worse – military apparatuses.

And if, as is well known, any tool placed in the hands of a criminal or dictator can have devastating effects in proportion to the power of the tool itself, this also applies to the enormous potential of AI, both positive and negative.

Also addressed and described in the AI-book are the dystopian and science fiction visions of the technological Singularity, which envisions AI supremacy over the human species, and Transhumanism, a doctrine that foreshadows the mutation of Homo Sapiens into immortal bionic forms with chip grafts and brain transplants.

The concept of Homo Extensus distances itself from these emerging techno-centric theories and expresses the need for an anthropocentric view of Artificial Intelligence, in line with human rights, foundational values of European humanistic culture. In this regard and in support of this vision, philosophers, anthropologists, massmediologists, computer scientists, artists, and ancient and modern pedagogues are cited.

To better focus and understand the current ethical and political challenge, reference is also made to crucial documents such as the AI Act, which expresses the European Union’s guidelines regarding the use of AI, and the Vatican’s “Antiqua et Nova” note on Artificial Intelligence.

An entire chapter is devoted to macro trends in various AI models, which are evolving rapidly, from conversational chatbots to operational agents, to those capable of innovating and organizing complex tasks.

Socioeconomic trends include potential effects on labor, impacts on the media, the economy and finance, and also those on government systems, with important differences between democracies and autocracies.

The vision of Homo Extensus is translated into certain principles, applicable to the relationship between humanity and technology.

It is becoming necessary for humans to position themselves above Artificial Intelligence-“Above AI“-by adopting methodologies, norms and tools that enable them to realize critical control of technology.

Again with a view to considering different AIs as a tool in human possession and control, and certainly not the other way around, it is proposed to adopt the plural form “Artificial Intelligences,” to demythologize the idea of a single universal AI and translate it instead into a range of concrete and distinct technologies and applications, serving the needs of different academic, institutional, educational and economic sectors.

The technology strategy and industrial policy of administrators and decision makers must take into account the possibility that AI will quickly become a “commodity“-that is, a commodity available at low cost-with wide choice of different models, and thus become a moldable raw material for a new generation of applications.

Homo Extensus also offers a series of historical analyses from which it borrows a positive vision of the future of human intelligence.

Through an excursus on the history of man and the technologies in his service, it is shown how in the past man has already been able to evolve and extend his mental capabilities through interaction with technologies, cognitive technologies in particular, which he himself invented: it happened with the alphabet, then with printing, scientific observation tools, photography and media, the Internet…

It is in light of the major evolutionary leaps in human civilization, triggered by the advent of as many technologies with profound impact on knowledge, that the role of Artificial Intelligence in accompanying a significant new evolutionary shift for human intelligence must be identified and understood.

Among others, the book gives this example: in the 1800s in Paris, the photographer Nadar introduced some artists to a recent invention, the camera. In an instant, with this amazing tool, it becomes possible to create more realistic images than those painted in whole days of patient work by portrait and landscape painters. As is also happening today with Artificial Intelligence, here is where the established skills of man are far surpassed by a machine. But the mental reaction of nineteenth-century artists is astonishing: Impressionism is born, to be followed by Expressionism, and then by Futurism, Abstractionism, and in general the avant-garde movements of contemporary art. In essence, a new “forma mentis” of the artist was born, a more complex and sophisticated artistic intelligence.

And just as in earlier eras, Titian or Rembrandt could never have imagined the art of Kandinsky or Mondrian, so it is very difficult for us to imagine the future forms of Extended Intelligence. We are-as the Futurists said-the primitives of a new age.

Over the millennia, the intellectual evolutionary leaps produced by human interaction with cognitive technologies have been even deeper and more important: emblematic is that caused in the ancient era by interaction with the alphabet technique, which led to monotheistic spirituality among the Jews and philosophy among the Greeks.

Arguably, today, after three thousand years, a new cognitive revolution comparable in impact to that of the phonetic alphabet is underway with the advent of AI.

To cope with this subversion, an intellectual mutation is again required, sketched in the anthropological vision of Homo Extensus, man extending his potential through AI.

A figure yet to be imagined and built.

Homo Extensus is not only an AI-book, but also a manifesto, aimed at and open to all people who look at the current developments in AI, fueled by techno-centric and technocratic visions, with attention and justified concern, and wish for its development in favor of humans.

We are at the beginning of a profound transformation, which requires a collective commitment to reflection, critical analysis, design skills, technological expertise, strategic vision, and inventive creativity.

The outcome of this challenge is not a foregone conclusion: what is certain is that it depends on us, on how the current generation, and in particular the educational community, will cope with and manage such a far-reaching techno-cognitive revolution, and embark on the path to a better humanity.

The multifaceted project Homo Extensus was born from the interdisciplinary skills and international experiences gained by the two authors, Gualtiero and Roberto Carraro.

The authors’ Innovation Design studio, Carraro LAB, is already engaged in the design and implementation of solutions for ‘extended human intelligence.

The book Homo Extensus is published in an innovative form, the AI-book. This format aims to experiment with new ways of interactive reading, such as creating an index adapted to readers’ profiles.

With conversational features, it also becomes possible to talk to the book, in text or voice form, to achieve personalized enjoyment.

Consistent with the principle of Homo Extensus, the AI-book is not a book written by AI, but a text written by human authors, using AI features to enhance the reader’s experience.

The publication of theAI-Book Homo Extensus will be followed by several manifestos, designed to stimulate the emergence of creative vanguards, and to promote the spread of a cultural sensibility that places the exciting challenge of contributing to an evolutionary leap in human intelligence at the center.