AI as IA: The use and abuse of artificial intelligence (AI) for human enhancement through intellectual augmentation (IA)

2025-08-18

AI Summary

This paper addresses core ethical challenges in AI-driven intelligence augmentation (IA), including performance limitations, safety risks, coercive manipulation, privacy violations, erosion of cognitive autonomy, threats to epistemic authenticity, and fairness deficits. Methodologically, it distinguishes ethical concerns specific to “pure intelligence augmentation” from those arising in broader human enhancement contexts, and constructs a rights-based ethical framework grounded in cognitive autonomy, informational privacy, and distributive fairness. Drawing on current advances in both invasive and non-invasive brain–computer interfaces, the study identifies critical technical bottlenecks and proposes governance pathways that balance technical feasibility with normative robustness. Its primary contribution lies in the first systematic integration of rights theory into IA ethics assessment—establishing a theoretically rigorous yet practically actionable normative foundation for sustainable, human-centered AI-enabled intelligence augmentation. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Bias, Fairness & Equity
• Natural Language Processing: Ethics — Bias, Fairness, Transparency & Privacy
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Fairness and ethical considerations in crowd work and in human-in-the-loop AI systems
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization

Abstract

This paper offers an overview of the prospects and ethics of using AI to achieve human enhancement, and more broadly what we call intellectual augmentation (IA). After explaining the central notions of human enhancement, IA, and AI, we discuss the state of the art in terms of the main technologies for IA, with or without brain-computer interfaces. Given this picture, we discuss potential ethical problems, namely inadequate performance, safety, coercion and manipulation, privacy, cognitive liberty, authenticity, and fairness in more detail. We conclude that while there are very significant technical hurdles to real human enhancement through AI, and significant ethical problems, there are also significant benefits that may realistically be achieved in ways that are consonant with a rights-based ethics as well. We also highlight the specific concerns that apply particularly to applications of AI for "sheer" IA (more realistic in the near term), and to enhancement applications, respectively.

Problem

• Ethical implications of AI for human intellectual augmentation
• Technical hurdles in AI-driven human enhancement technologies
• Balancing benefits and risks of AI in cognitive liberty

Innovation

• AI for intellectual augmentation enhancement
• Brain-computer interfaces for cognitive liberty
• Rights-based ethics in human enhancement