AI Extenders: The Ethical and Societal Implications of Humans Cognitively Extended by AI
Open accessAbstract
Humans and AI systems are usually portrayed as separate systems that we need to align in values and goals. However, there is a great deal of AI technology found in non-autonomous systems that are used as cognitive tools by humans. Under the extended mind thesis, the functional contributions of these tools become as essential to our cognition as our brains. But AI can take cognitive extension towards totally new capabilities, posing new philosophical, ethical and technical challenges. To analyse these challenges better, we define and place AI extenders in a continuum between fully-externalized systems, loosely coupled with humans, and fully internalized processes, with operations ultimately performed by the brain, making the tool redundant. We dissect the landscape of cognitive capabilities that can foreseeably be extended by AI and examine their ethical implications.We suggest that cognitive extenders using AI be treated as distinct from other cognitive enhancers by all relevant stakeholders, including developers, policy makers, and human users.
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A line of worry already raised in the literature is that of a sort of cognitive atrophy.
“one further line of worry that has already been brought up in the literature [Hernández-Orallo and Vold, 2019] is that of a sort of cognitive atrophy”
From Generative midtended cognition and Artificial Intelligence: thinging with thinging things (2025) · cites this paper as Hernández-Orallo and Vold, 2019
AI can be both a cognitive and an epistemic enhancer for its human users.
“The key point is that, beyond being an example of epistemic technology embedded in a socio-technical context, AI can be both a cognitive, and an epistemic enhancer for its human users (Hernández-Orallo & Vold, 2019;Alvarado, 2023Alvarado, , 2022)).”
From Experts or Authorities? The Strange Case of the Presumed Epistemic Superiority of Artificial Intelligence Systems (2024) · cites this paper as Hernández-Orallo & Vold, 2019
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- Authors
- Hernández-Orallo, J., & Vold, K.
- Affiliations
- Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- ORCID
- Vold, Karina
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2019 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2019-01-27
- Pages
- 507-513
- ISSN
- 3065-8365 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2962564927
- Cited by
- 99
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4
- FWCI
- 14.65
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI Ethics and Society (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Funders
- Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Leverhulme Trust (Grant RC-2015-067.)
- Future of Life Institute (RFP2-152)
- EU Spanish MINECO (TIN 2015-69175-C4-1-R,)
- Spanish MECD (Salvador de Madariaga grant (PRX17/00467))
- Generalitat Valenciana (GVA) (PROMETEOII/2015/013 and PROMETEO/2019/098)
- GVA (BEST grant (BEST/2017/045))
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Keywords
- extended mind, cognitive extension, human-AI interaction, cognitive tools, cognitive enhancement, AI ethics, human-AI alignment
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