A Digital Centaur is a term used to describe a human who has been enhanced and augmented with digital tools.
History
- Several sources mention that this terminology originated from the U.S. Military Forces’ efforts to improve the quality of soldiers and pilots by enhancing them with technology
- In 1998, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov held the world’s first Centaur Chess matches, where human-computer teams competed against solo computers or humans. This demonstrated that a human strategically guiding an AI system could outperform either alone.
- In his 2013 book ”Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds For The Better”, Clive Thompson talked how people can become intellectual centaurs, enhancing their capabilities by using tools to handle more information and make connections beyond individual capacity.
- In his 2020 book ”The Centaur’s Dilemma: National Security Law for the Coming AI Revolution”, James E. Baker portrays the Centaur model of human-AI interaction as the sole reliable method of interaction between humans and AI within U.S. national security agencies at the current moment, acknowledging that this could evolve in the future.
Related links
- Nicky Case, How To Become A Centaur · Journal of Design and Science, 2018
- Scott Klososky, The Rise of the Digital Centaur | MHEDA, 2022
- Helen Dunkle, Nicci Cosolo, Introducing the Role of the Digital Centaur - Emids, 2023