Extended Mind Theory and Chat GPT: Mind Blown
I learned something this morning that changes my understanding of how we think
I’m going to start this by acknowledging a remarkable newsletter post I read this morning. The newsletter is New World, Same Humans by David Mattin. In it he looks at the world of AI, human/machine interaction, and climate issues. It’s a futurist now point of view.
My epiphany this morning was triggered this morning by a post looking at something called Extended Mind Theory and how chatbots like Chat GPT fit into it. This is something I’ll be rereading because it offers a look into how we use tools to extend our ability to carry on an internal dialog, for problem-solving and to access creativity.
As I understand it, EMT theorizes that tools like notebooks and pencils extend our mind’s capabilities by serving as a kind of external memory. The theory, which dates back to the 1990s, goes further and looks at how a dialog we have with ourselves is a way we extend our capabilities and how tech can speed up the process.
Think of our phones as an extension of our minds. We have the ability to look up virtually any kind of information nearly instantly by accessing the Internet with these ubiquitous devices. They do not make us smarter, but they do make us better…
