intelligence augmentation (ia, by acronym,) the counterpart of artificial intelligence, is the field of study that aims to, rather than build completely new intellignce, enhance existing intelligence. many despondant ai researchers have turned to ia believing that it will offer much more immediate benefits than the promises of ai which lie far over the horizon. indeed, ia is already a part of our daily lives. the internet, for example, is a tool of ia and its usefulness will surely spread. imagine first, the not so distant future, perhaps 10 years from now, (relative to this article's writing in 2000,) when a normal pair of sunglasses will have a wireless connection to the internet as well as voice activated word processing and calculation capabilities. by most definitions of intelligence, the wearer of such glasses would be more intelligent, as they would have all of the knowledge of the internet readily available, the ability to store text information with virtually no chance of forgetting it and the ability to do inhumanly complex mathematics in an instant. further imagine a time when computers interface directly with the human mind, allowing us to download the memories of others. people would then have access to any humanly known piece of information, while retaining some degree of individuality because they would have the ability to chose which experiences they would like to download. there are however, some moral implications regarding ia. many people wonder where the line between human and machine must be drawn and worry that at a certain level of technology, we would cease to be human and be a hive mind (see borg,) or a machine.