I'd rather read AI as Augmented Intelligence: human institutions using computation to extend their cognition, sometimes with extraordinary results and sometimes with catastrophic stupidity.
How the word moved
In December 2025 I used the idea for institutional augmentation in AGI After Cognitive Capitalism. In March 2026 I said it outright in Public Intelligence. In May 2026 I put Hutchins beside Foucault and concluded we've always been artificial. By July 2026 it had become part of Epistry.
In my words
"We have always been artificial."
from Cognitive Sovereignty, 7 May 2026
"The capability does not “reside” in the model; it emerges from the institutional stack in which the model participates."
from Bhumics. Weekly Planet #15: The AI Bubble, Part 3. AGI After Cognitive Capitalism, 1 Dec 2025
Related
- Inherited from Edwin Hutchins - distributed cognition is his.
- Inherited from Michel Foucault - I take political technology from him.
- Related AGI as Institution - AGI defined as an institution.
- Related Planetary Cyborg - I treat militaries as artificial intelligences.
- Related Public Intelligence - augmented intelligence in the public interest.
- Related Epistry - it got absorbed there.
Still open
I run two pictures of AI through the same essays: AI as continuous augmentation and AI as discontinuous enclosure. I haven't decided which one wins.