distributed cognition

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

Distributed cognition refers to the way that humans (and other animals) effectibely think using aspects of their enviornment inclduing interactions with other people. Ths may be explciit, such as using a calcuator to help arithmetic. It may also be implicit such as knowing were one is in the process of assembling a piece of flat-pack furnture becasue you can see the part-assembled piece in front of you. Aspects of distributed cognition can form the inspiration for distributed AI and also for understanding the behaviour of hybrid human-AI systems.

Used on pages 383, 388