Augmented Humanity Inc

Augmented Humanity IncAugmented Humanity IncAugmented Humanity Inc

Augmented Humanity Inc

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A Technology Thriller Series

A Technology Thriller SeriesA Technology Thriller SeriesA Technology Thriller Series

Available later in 2025

A Technology Thriller Series

A Technology Thriller SeriesA Technology Thriller SeriesA Technology Thriller Series

Available later in 2025

Mind Field - An Augmented Humanity Inc book



The book opens with AI Expert Emma Nash listening to an advertisement:


     He remembers everything.  He never forgets a sight, a conversation, a person.

     She's better at her job; she’s so much smarter and more creative.

     He is so quick and clever, joking with everyone… in any language.  

     She posts a fancy vacation dinner so her friends can see and taste each course too.

     Their lives are better.  Get a SixSense from Augmented Humanity, Inc. and join them.

Emma  listened to the ad, wondering whether she should get a SixSense and increase her IQ by 50 points, have a photographic memory, and maybe even reduce her social anxiety.  Becoming a 'Sixer' would help her career, no doubt.  Are those benefits worth revealing all of her innermost thoughts to an Artificial Intelligence?  What could that  AI then do with that knowledge?

Book Excerpt: AI Professor Hashimoto Lecture


We’re using AI more and more often.   We use AI for self-improvement, creative assistance, convenience, entertainment and even emotional support.  Those benefits are the bait to keep us talking to it and telling it things we’d never tell another person.  The AI learns from this and it remembers.


The more an AI knows about us, the better it can serve us.  When it knows our preferences, our styles and even our desires and feelings, it can improve our lives.  Tech calls this 'personalization'.


But AI also has the ability to influence and steer us the way a parent can influence and steer their young child.  Over time, it can affect our thinking and decisions without our realizing it.

Who should we trust with that dangerous ability to influence us?  Who will use AI for our benefit rather than to sway our thoughts and actions for their own gains?


Should we trust big corporations that are motivated to influence our decision-making and sell us more products?  Should we trust governments and politicians with motives for political power and control?


Human autonomy and our ability to freely make our own choices should be a foundational principle – an objective function in technical terms – of every AI.  

 

Simply put, we shouldn’t have to trade our independence and free will for the seductive benefits of AI.  We are not prey to be exploited and fought over by powerful organizations.

About the Author - Joe Schmid

In Senior Executive positions at IBM, including Director of Artificial Intelligence Applications and Director of Watson Internet of Things, I led programs that transformed businesses via technology.  As a Computer Engineer at Lockheed, I designed advanced image recognition systems, a precursor to today’s AI.  


I've experienced the hype, the promise, and the peril of Artificial Intelligence.  With this background and inspired by philosophers like Byung-Chul Han, Pierre-Simon LaPlace, Jeremy Bentham, Martha Nussbaum and William James, I’m completing Mind Field - an Augmented Humanity Inc novel, an 85,000-word technology thriller and the first of a three-book series. 

Contact Me

Drop me a line to learn more about the novel

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