Kazuhiro Sakurada: The Goals of Extended Intelligence

2024/11/11

AI is developing rapidly. Depending on the content, conversations with generative AI are indistinguishable from those with humans. There are many discussions suggesting that AI may surpass human intelligence in the near future.

As represented by Adam and Eve's "forbidden fruit," Snow White's "poisoned apple," and Van Gogh's "Still Life with Apples," apples have long stimulated human imagination. We perceive the physical entity of an apple as an image. The smooth texture felt in the hand. The vibrant red color. The unique sweet and floral scent. The refreshing sweet and sour taste that spreads when eaten. From the integration of the five senses, images of various objects in the real world are born. The state of the body is imaged through visceral sensations. Objects that cause anxiety or unpleasant thoughts disturb the state of the organs. The five senses are linked to visceral sensations, creating meaning for oneself. In contrast, thinking means observing and interpreting the world to produce knowledge. Human interpretation is deeply connected to experiences gained through the senses. Humans weave feeling and thinking together like a tapestry to project reality.

The projected reality held by each individual cannot be seen, but it can be inferred through conversation, writing, and works of art. What AI learns is the human projected reality expressed in text and images. AI itself does not experience and feel, nor does it observe and think. By training on massive amounts of text data using transformers, it becomes possible to predict the next word or document when a certain sentence is given. Since human intellectual activities can be replaced by this format, AI converses like a human. However, that is essentially different from thinking.

Isn't living a process of self-creation within a group? Through creation, invisible things such as the hearts of others, the state of nature, and the future of oneself and society take shape. What AI can do is generation through diffusion models, not creation. Using AI as a means for humans to become more creative is called extended intelligence. To deepen the understanding of diseases and pioneer new medical care, the Department of Extended Intelligence Medical Sciences is developing new theories that integrate reasoning from medical sciences, information science, physics, and other fields. What is needed in the AI era is well-trained human natural intelligence.