Human-Machine Coupling

We have most often defined intelligence as something uniquely human, and in turn, imposed this anthropocentric bias towards the evaluation of machinic intelligence: such as in the Turing test (where machines fool a human into thinking another human is conversing with it). Overcoming this bias requires us to imagine a diversification of intelligence, and not merely figuring intelligence in the human-mode, as a competition between us and machines. Human-machine coupling acknowledges both our universal relation to tools (tool-bearing animals), and the necessity of machinic collaboration to extend our cognitive capacities, as evidenced by recent Centaur Chess/Go, matches where humans+machines outperform any entity in isolation.[1] Human-machine coupling is mutually transformative, meaning that we create machines, that reshape us, in an ongoing reciprocity.

[1] Mark Stefik, ‘Half-Human, Half-Computer? Meet the Modern Centaur,’ 2017. Available here.