Abstract
From the very beginning, with the emergence of the digital computer during the Second World War, artificial intelligence has almost always been seen as a simulation of the human mind. Yet one of the most powerful models of human intelligence in our time has of course been the computer. This is hardly surprising, given that cognitive science, neuroscience and artificial intelligence are disciplines that have co-evolved over the past half-century or more. I'm going to suggest that human thought must be understood as taking place outside the body, that it is therefore intrinsically artificial and "technological" in nature. In a longer "artificial history" of natural intelligence, we see how the human mind and brain have always been nested within larger technological systems. Consequently, the computer doesn't just mirror the human; it opens up the potential for extraordinary new forms of human intelligence. But the automaticity of computation has also created new risks for the human mind, which we are now facing in the midst of the 21st century's digital revolution.
