AI evokes a tool. EI evokes a part­ner­ship. We believe in the impor­tance of set­ting a col­lab­o­ra­tive inten­tion for how we inte­grate the super intel­li­gence of machines into our lives.

“The cru­cial role of humans in an EI sys­tem is to under­stand and group infor­ma­tion to inform analy­ses in new ways. Intu­ition and inven­tion allow for the com­bi­na­tion of data in dif­fer­ent ways to tease out new under­stand­ing.” — Satya Basu

The ways in which we deploy machine learn­ing to enhance human endeav­or must also respect the fun­da­men­tal inter-rela­tion­ships between peo­ple and all liv­ing sys­tems. For this rea­son, we find val­ue in dis­tin­guish­ing EI from AI.¹⁰ Extend­ed Intel­li­gence can serve as an inte­gral com­po­nent to the com­plex sys­tems that com­prise the world we inhabit.

As human-made systems—including the machines and algo­rithms that accom­plish many of our tasks—become increas­ing­ly capa­ble of tak­ing over work, it is essen­tial we see those sys­tems as an exten­sion of our­selves, and not as some­thing sep­a­rate. We don’t want our most pow­er­ful tech­nolo­gies to replace us. We want them to work with us.

When it comes to how we think about tech­nol­o­gy work­ing on our behalf, there are mas­sive eco­nom­ic and social impli­ca­tions at play. Pur­suit of cap­i­tal mar­kets has facil­i­tat­ed major progress. Mas­sive enter­pris­es have suc­ceed­ed through the sourc­ing of cap­i­tal. In many ways, humans have already entrust­ed our own­er­ship of these cap­i­tal mar­kets over to the machines, because bots trade stocks in nanosec­onds. This might be effi­cient, but in the quest for effi­cien­cy, we seem to be giv­ing up agency over our own humanity.

We need to secure the integri­ty of these rela­tion­ships between influ­en­tial human enter­pris­es and of new machine tech­nolo­gies. To this end, we also need to claim the right to expe­ri­ence inno­va­tion in our own lives with­out the neces­si­ty of a new gad­get. We want to keep our focus on the impor­tance of build­ing inno­va­tions in con­nec­tion to our minds. In this way, we can hon­or the com­plex­i­ty of one of nature’s most mys­te­ri­ous systems.

In a recent move to fur­ther pro­pel the idea of Extend­ed Intel­li­gence, the MIT Media Lab has part­nered with the IEEE Stan­dards Asso­ci­a­tion (IEEE-SA) to cre­ate a glob­al Coun­cil on Extend­ed Intel­li­gence. The heart of this part­ner­ship rests on the impor­tance of social and eth­i­cal progress through respon­si­ble design. The coun­cil empha­sizes a “holis­tic evo­lu­tion of our species in pos­i­tive align­ment with the envi­ron­men­tal and oth­er sys­tems com­pris­ing the mod­ern algo­rith­mic world”.¹¹ In pur­su­ing this the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work, the rela­tion­ship between humans and machines can evolve along more thought­ful and respon­si­ble guide­lines. This is a vision of the future of new tech­nol­o­gy in which we choose to participate.