Objects of Research: Hadeel Naeem

For today’s edition of our “Objects of Research” series, we interviewed c:o/re Junior Fellow Hadeel Naeem. Her current research focuses on how to responsibly extend the mind with AI systems and therefore acquire extended knowledge.

“A pen and a notebook are essential for my research. They help me think. It’s not at all about the words I write. I rarely read them again. Scribbling is just an act that helps me stack ideas on top of each other and do all the complicated thinking and connection-building.

I also turn to scribbling in my notebook when I am stuck in the writing process. There is often a time after the first rough draft of the paper when some ideas stop flowing smoothly or don’t fit very well with the main argument. I turn to the notebook and start writing the main ideas, deliberating how they support each other.

This is all especially interesting since a lot of my research is about extended cognition, which is the idea that we sometimes employ external resources such that part of our thinking happens outside our body (in these resources).”