#8 intelligence augmentation

Hidden in Plain Sight: Human + AI, centaur, doppelganger, subconscious compass

Alice in Futureland

Mar 02, 2023

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intelligence augmentation

AI isn’t taught using the real world as a reference. Rather, it learns from a mediated representation of the real world—with all the biases that entails. There’s an idea that the right thought at the right time can compel understanding, empathy to mobilize people to act. Will synthetic thoughtware have this power to move culture or will AI need IA, to touch our soul?

human + AI

"When you create a Human+AI team, the hard part isn’t the “AI”.
It isn’t even the “Human”. It’s the “+”.

Indie game developer Nicky Case, in a winning essay five years ago, instigates a view we need to embrace today amid the frenzy of ChatGPT doing, well, everything your creative and intelligent self should be doing.

Case, who teaches about complex systems through games & simulations, writes “many fear that AI will take over our jobs, or even take over humanity itself. Meanwhile, the story of IA (intelligence augmentation) has been one of a tragic fall, the idea of IA has slowly been forgotten, as technology shifted from tools for creation and more towards tools for consumption. But now, these two story threads may be starting to wrap together.

IA can give AI the human partnership it needs in order to remain aligned with our deepest goals and values. And in return, AI can give IA some new replacement wheels for the bicycle of our mind."

Case asks the questions we should all be contemplating: IA may be able to align AI’s goals with humans’ goals, but how can we align augmented humans’ goals with non-augmented humans’ goals? Are we just replacing a divide between humans and AI’s with a divide between humans and humans 2.0?

Case’s answer: We will live in symbiosis with AI.
Symbiosis is an Ancient Greek word that means “living together.” Symbiosis shows us you can have fruitful collaborations even if you have different goals or are even different species. Symbiosis is the “+”.

A new chapter in humanity’s story is beginning, and we — living together —get to write what happens next.

SOURCE: Nicky Case, JoDS (Journal of Design and Science, MIT Media Lab)

centaur

Describing the possible symbiosis between humans and digital information technologies, the chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov re-introduced the term “centaur” In the late 1990s. the term centaur has recently come back into common use to connote the possibilities for artificial intelligence applications and systems to amplify human abilities.

To help you consider the possible futures of human-machine interactions, FUTURE NARRATIVES forecasted dozens of emerging technologies that are expected to play a pivotal role in the linkage between humans and machines. Incorporated into science fiction narratives, they invite you to explore the outcomes derived from logical extrapolations of the capabilities of current technologies and the social contexts they would exist within.

Future Narratives: Centaur is an interactive visualization about our evolving relationship with technology. In four related stories By interacting with them, you get to choose your own path through the future and, in the process, consider the possibilities and implications of emerging technologies in extending the human potential.

SOURCE: Envisioning

doppelganger

Is it possible to recreate a human being based solely on their online data?Create the doppelganger of someone you don't know at all? Stage a person's life down to the last detail, reenact and film it? For their investigative and artistic data experiment MADE TO MEASURE, the group Laokoon did.

In their work, the Laokoon group questions how our concepts of humanity and society have changed in the digital age. In the MADE TO MEASURE experiment, five years of a person's life were reconstructed and filmed in detail on a large theatre stage. A few months later, the original and her datafied double met. The experiment became tangible on an interactive storytelling website, where visitors can experience what conclusions can be drawn about a person's character, psychology and future behavior though algorithms.

MADE TO MEASURE allows visitors to experience in an impressive way how far-reaching the insights into our inner lives and our most intimate secrets are, which we grant Google, Facebook & Co. every day. And it poses the big philosophical question: Does the idea of individual autonomy become obsolete in the digital age? Who determines who we are and who we think we are?

SOURCE: Laokoon

subconscious compass

Disruptive and transformational discoveries need support from both the technical and the human side. That is the vision of Dr. Julia Mossbridge, founder of the Mossbridge Institute and inventor of Choice Compass, an app that uses a patented and science-backed method that listens to your heart in your decision making.

Choice Compass uses the built-in camera on your smartphone or tablet to help provide subconscious support, by analyzing heart rhythms that are related to your feelings about two choices you are thinking about. The app's algorithms detect each heartbeat based on the variations in blood flow color. It then uses this to determine not only the average beats per minute (BPM), but the interval between beats, or the interbeat interval (IBI). It is the IBI that is of most interest to us as its patterns contain information about our body’s inner state. These patterns reflect how the human body responds to conscious and subconscious feelings, including those related to decision making.

The science behind Choice Compass comes from the interdisciplinary work at the Mossbridge Institute in the areas of intuition, experimental psychology and psychophysiology, artificial intelligence, the physics of time, and cognitive neuroscience.

Mossbridge is also the founder of TILT: The Institute for Love and Time, committed to providing evidence-based, non-addictive, humane technologies and tools that allow people to have a deeper and more loving connection with themselves over time – and from that place learn to create a healthier and more positive future.

SOURCE: Mossbridge Institute

human essentials

In the new age…
Humans imagine new things.
Machines optimize anything.
Humans and Machines can co-create everything.
You’ll need 5 things to thrive.

Nichol Bradford, the Executive Director and co-founder of the Transformative Technology Lab and friend of ALICE, posits the 5 human essentials in the age of AI:

1) You must become emotionally fluent.
2) You’ll have to become great at in-person connection.
3) Find a way to value your imperfections.
4) You’ll need to find and refine your uniqueness.
5) Go dream big and create new things.
We will become more creative. You’re about to get a great deal more power to express.

SOURCE: Transformative Tech

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