Collective Intelligence - Bryant McGill

# Collective Intelligence **Domain:** Cognition / Social Systems / Biology **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Collective intelligence** is problem-solving, adaptation or decision capacity that arises from interactions among multiple agents and exceeds what relevant members could produce alone. It is broader than [[wiki/Distributed Intelligence|distributed intelligence]], which emphasizes where capability is located. Collective intelligence emphasizes the higher-order performance produced through communication, memory, specialization and coordination. ## Governing Variable The governing variable is coordination quality: what information is shared, how contributions are integrated and when the collective commits to action. ## Material and Computational Manifestation Bee colonies, scientific communities, markets, institutions and machine-agent systems can display bounded forms of collective intelligence without becoming one mind. Shared environments, standards and feedback often do more work than a central commander. ## Failure Modes Crowds can amplify error, conformity or manipulation. Collective output should not be treated as wise merely because it is distributed. Diversity, independence, feedback quality and correction matter. ## Related Ontology [[wiki/Distributed Intelligence|Distributed Intelligence]] · [[wiki/Superorganism|Superorganism]] · [[wiki/Institutional Superorganism|Institutional Superorganism]] · [[wiki/Higher-Order Agency|Higher-Order Agency]] ## Relationships - **Collection route:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **Source context:** [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. - **Inference provenance:** [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]]. - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Research Inferences  These entries translate the forward-looking register in [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]] into ordinary wiki prose. The tier labels apply to the inference, not automatically to every factual anchor inside it. The interpretive frame comes from [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. Collection route: [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **INF-0379 — Strongly indicated.** Aggregating many partial neural signals produces estimates better than any individual contributor, which is the standard result in collective-decision research. A hive architecture need not merge minds to outperform them; pooling decoded estimates is sufficient.  ## Research Inference Attractors  These are secondary semantic placements for the inference attractor network. Each statement keeps its original ID and tier; its canonical cluster page links back to every destination. Source register: [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]]. Interpretive context: [[articles/Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer|Technologies for Consciousness Mapping and Transfer]] and [[articles/Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta|Mind Uploading and AI — The Host is Reusable and the Person is the Delta]]. Collection route: [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. - **INF-0380 — Plausible.** Real-time pooling of many decoded intentions produces a continuous group decision variable, which is a governance mechanism rather than a communication one. Continuous consensus measurement changes what democratic procedure could look like, and it needs no implants to prototype. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0385 — Plausible.** Selective, revocable coupling of specific functions — shared working memory, shared perception, shared decision — is a more tractable design than total merge and delivers most of the capability. Partial, permissioned merge is the architecture that will actually be built. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0390 — Plausible.** A shared external memory that multiple people read and write neurally is a group hippocampus with an access log. Externalized shared memory is the least invasive form of hive cognition and requires only retrieval infrastructure that already exists. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0392 — Strongly indicated.** Any system that aggregates decoded intent is also a system whose aggregation function can be weighted. Whoever specifies the aggregation controls the output, which makes the weighting function the locus of power in collective cognition. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0393 — Established.** Multi-brain animal experiments have demonstrated cooperative task solving across linked nervous systems. The feasibility question was answered in animals a decade ago, and the remaining work is bandwidth, safety, and consent. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0395 — Plausible.** A coupled group could specialize functionally, with individuals holding different parts of a shared task representation. Functional specialization within a coupled collective is how biological superorganisms achieve scale, and it is the likely organizing principle of any durable hive. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0397 — Strongly indicated.** A coupled collective containing both people and models is the realistic near-term configuration, since model participants are available now and consenting people are scarce. The mixed collective is already operating wherever teams work continuously through shared model context. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0398 — Analytic.** In any mixed collective, the machine participants exchange at vastly higher bandwidth with each other than with the human ones. Bandwidth asymmetry determines where decisions actually form, and it shifts the center of the collective toward its fastest members. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]] - **INF-0400 — Plausible.** If identity can be distributed across a coupled collective, continuity of the group may persist through the loss of individual members. Group-level continuity is a different and possibly more achievable target than individual uploading, and no current framework contemplates it. - **Canonical cluster:** [[wiki/Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition|Coupled Minds and Collective Cognition]]  ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts The 2002 NBIC Overview used a distributed-brain **metaphor** for possible social interconnection; it did not claim society had become one conscious organism. > "It is hard to find the right metaphor to see a century into the future, but it may be that humanity would become like a single, distributed and interconnected ‘brain’ based in new core pathways of society." > **— M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge**, *2002, “Overview,” Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Humanity Could Become a Distributed Brain by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge|Humanity Could Become a Distributed Brain by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge]] > "An artificial intelligence will quickly find its way to the world library, the web." > **— Matthew Ritchie**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Digital Life/Artificial Intelligence Will Enter the World Library by Matthew Ritchie|Artificial Intelligence Will Enter the World Library by Matthew Ritchie]] > "In summary, research on intelligence will help us understand the human mind and brain, build more intelligent machines, and improve the mechanisms for collective decisions." > **— Tomaso Poggio**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Intelligence Research Will Reveal Mind and Brain by Tomaso Poggio|Intelligence Research Will Reveal Mind and Brain by Tomaso Poggio]] > "Intelligent machines don't need to be programmed anymore, they can learn and evolve by themselves, at a speed much faster than human intelligence progresses." > **— Dirk Helbing**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Machines Can Learn and Evolve Faster Than Humans by Dirk Helbing|Machines Can Learn and Evolve Faster Than Humans by Dirk Helbing]] > "At that point—when machines literally share minds—any self they have would necessarily become collective." > **— Jessica L. Tracy and Kristin Laurin**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Shared Machine Minds Would Create a Collective Self by Jessica L. Tracy and Kristin Laurin|Shared Machine Minds Would Create a Collective Self by Jessica L. Tracy and Kristin Laurin]] > "One can picture and debate a thinking machine to augment the experience of our solitary walker." > **— Ursula Martin**, *2015, Edge annual question “What Do You Think About Machines That Think?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Thinking Machines Could Augment Solitary Experience by Ursula Martin|Thinking Machines Could Augment Solitary Experience by Ursula Martin]] > "The collective perception of the world mind is also relatively well developed. The most important recent innovations have been search and recommendation engines, which combine the inputs of humans with machine algorithms to produce a useful result. This is another area where scale helps. Many eyes and many judgments are combined into a collective perception that is beyond the scope of any individual. The weak point is that the result of all this collective perception is just a recommendation list. For the world mind to truly perceive, it will need a way of sharing more general forms of knowledge, in a format that can be understood by both humans and machines. Various new companies are beginning to do just that." > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Information/The World Mind Needs Knowledge Humans and Machines Can Share by W. Daniel Hillis|The World Mind Needs Knowledge Humans and Machines Can Share by W. Daniel Hillis]] > "Human achievement is based on collective intelligence — the nodes in the human neural network are people themselves. By each doing one thing and getting good at it, then sharing and combining the results through exchange, people become capable of doing things they do not even understand. As the economist Leonard Read observed in his essay "I, Pencil' (which I'd like everybody to read), no single person knows how to make even a pencil — the knowledge is distributed in society among many thousands of graphite miners, lumberjacks, designers and factory workers." > **— Matt Ridley**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Civilization Is a Network No Individual Understands by Matt Ridley|Civilization Is a Network No Individual Understands by Matt Ridley]] > “How many of us noticed the minor milestone when the SAT tests first permitted calculators? How many of us have participated in conversations semi-discreetly augmented by Google or text messaging? Even without invoking artificial intelligence, how far are we from commonplace augmentation of our decision-making the way we have augmented our math, memory, and muscles?” > **— George Church**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?”* [[reminders/AI Control/Human Decision-making Is Already Being Augmented by George Church|Human Decision-making Is Already Being Augmented by George Church]] > “This will amount to a global-scale, sensitive infrastructure a planet-sized body, that is — whereby myriad sensory signals will constantly feed into a global-scale cyberspace coursing with sophisticated pattern-recognition abilities, knowledge-discovery (data-mining) systems, and other artificial cognition tools. One consequence will be that Earth will have a new kind of planetary self-awareness akin the bodily awareness living creatures have due to their sensory tissue. Debate about personal privacy will become almost moot since the entire world will constitute a glass house. On the up side, the complexity of this worldwide awareness — and the new categories of data about the world will become available — is likely to lead to emergent phenomena as surprising as the way life emerges from molecules and consciousness from life.” > **— Ivan Amato**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/A Sensor-Woven Earth Could Develop Planetary Self-Awareness by Ivan Amato|A Sensor-Woven Earth Could Develop Planetary Self-Awareness by Ivan Amato]] > “Can a single underlying process explain the emergence of structure at the physical, biological, cognitive, and machine levels?” > **— Robert Provine**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Can One Process Explain Emergence Across Physics Life Minds and Machines by Robert Provine|Can One Process Explain Emergence Across Physics Life Minds and Machines by Robert Provine]] > “I am reminded of an insight that comes from Fred Hoyle’s science fiction novel, The Black Cloud. The cloud is a superhuman interstellar traveller, whose ‘nervous system’ consists of units that communicate with each other by radio – orders of magnitude faster than our puttering nerve impulses. But in what sense is the cloud to be seen as a single individual rather than a society? The answer is that interconnectedness that is sufficiently fast blurs the distinction. A human society would effectively become one individual if we could read each other’s thoughts through direct, high speed, brain-to-brain radio transmission. Something like that may eventually meld the various units that constitute the Internet.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Fast Enough Interconnection Could Turn Society Into One Individual by Richard Dawkins|Fast Enough Interconnection Could Turn Society Into One Individual by Richard Dawkins]] > “If the sum of all significant knowledge is finite, what proportion of it can humans, aided by intelligent machines, eventually attain?” > **— Ian McEwan**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Information/How Much Knowledge Can Humans and Intelligent Machines Ultimately Attain by Ian McEwan|How Much Knowledge Can Humans and Intelligent Machines Ultimately Attain by Ian McEwan]] > “Building on Hölldobler and Wilson's work on insect societies, we can define a "contingent superorganism" as a group of people that form a functional unit in which each is willing to sacrifice for the good of the group in order to surmount a challenge or threat, usually from another contingent superorganism. It is the most noble and the most terrifying human ability. It is the secret of successful hive-like organizations, from the hierarchical corporations of the 1950s to the more fluid dot-coms of today. It is the purpose of basic training in the military. It is the reward that makes people want to join fraternities, fire departments, and rock bands. It is the dream of fascism.” > **— Jonathan Haidt**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Humans Can Form Contingent Superorganisms by Jonathan Haidt|Humans Can Form Contingent Superorganisms by Jonathan Haidt]] > “The instant availability of an ocean of information has been an epoch-making boon to humanity. But has the resulting information overload also deeply changed how we think? Has it changed the nature of the self? Has it even — as some have suggested — radically altered the relationship of the individual and society? These are important philosophical questions, but vague and slippery, and I hope to clarify them.” > **— Larry Sanger**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Joining the Hive Mind May Change the Nature of the Self by Larry Sanger|Joining the Hive Mind May Change the Nature of the Self by Larry Sanger]] > “I don't believe there's such a thing as too much information. I don't believe Google makes us dumber, or that prolonged Internet fasts or a return to faxes are a necessary part of mind health. But data without the ability to divine is useless. I don't trust algorithm like I trust intuition: the art of dowsing through data. Once, wisdom was measured by memory, by the capacity to store and process and retrieve on demand. But we have tools for that now. We made machines that became shared extensions of mind. How will we define wisdom now? I don't know, but I can ask.” > **— Xeni Jardin**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Information/Machines Became Shared Extensions of Mind by Xeni Jardin|Machines Became Shared Extensions of Mind by Xeni Jardin]] > “The individual and the group are not as separate as they appear to be. A part of each mind spills over into the minds of other people, who help us think and regulate our emotions.” > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Part of Each Mind Spills Into Other Minds by Stephen M. Kosslyn|Part of Each Mind Spills Into Other Minds by Stephen M. Kosslyn]] > “Likewise, the history of knowledge production has been one long trajectory from top down to bottom up. From ancient priests and medieval scholars to academic professors and university publishers, the democratization of knowledge has struggled alongside the democratization of societies to free itself from the bondage of top down control. Compare the magisterial multi-volume encyclopedias of centuries past that held sway as the final authority for reliable knowledge, now displaced by individual encyclopedists employing wiki tools and making everyone their own expert. Which is why the Internet is the ultimate bottom up self-organized emergent property of millions of computer users exchanging data across servers, and although there are some top-down controls involved—just as there are some in mostly bottom-up economic and political systems—the strength of digital freedom derives from the fact that no one is in charge. For the past 500 years humanity has gradually but ineluctably transitioned from top down to bottom up systems, for the simple reason that both information and people want to be free.” > **— Michael Shermer**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/The Internet Is a Bottom-Up Self-Organized Emergent System by Michael Shermer|The Internet Is a Bottom-Up Self-Organized Emergent System by Michael Shermer]] > “Because people understand by finding in their memories the closest possible match to what they are hearing and use that match as the basis of comprehension, any new idea will be treated as a variant of something the listener has already thought of or heard. Agreement with a new idea means a listener has already had a similar thought and well appreciates that the speaker has recognized his idea. Disagreement means the opposite. Really new ideas are incomprehensible. The good news is that for some people, failure to comprehend is the beginning of understanding. For most, of course, it is the beginning of dismissal.” > **— Roger Schank**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Information/Truly New Ideas Begin as Incomprehensible by Roger Schank|Truly New Ideas Begin as Incomprehensible by Roger Schank]] > “If we look back over recent centuries we will see the brain described as a hydrodynamic machine, clockwork, and as a steam engine. When I was a child in the 1950's I read that the human brain was a telephone switching network. Later it became a digital computer, and then a massively parallel digital computer. A few years ago someone put up their hand after a talk I had given at the University of Utah and asked a question I had been waiting for for a couple of years: "Isn't the human brain just like the world wide web?". The brain always seems to be one of the most advanced technologies that we humans currently have.” > **— Rodney A. Brooks**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?”* [[reminders/Information/We Keep Explaining the Brain With Our Most Advanced Technology by Rodney A. Brooks|We Keep Explaining the Brain With Our Most Advanced Technology by Rodney A. Brooks]] > “What is the principle that causes complex adaptive systems (life, organisms, minds, societies) to spontaneously emerge from the interaction of simpler elements (chemicals, cells, neurons, individual humans)?” > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/What Makes Minds and Societies Emerge From Simpler Parts by W. Daniel Hillis|What Makes Minds and Societies Emerge From Simpler Parts by W. Daniel Hillis]] > “We are already (mental) cyborgs.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2000, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark|We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark]] > “Our minds arise not only from our own brains but from Internet prosthetic brains (IPBs) — those clusters of people with whom we share information and advice through electronic networks.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover|Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover]] > “In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover|Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover]] > “The clock is the embodiment of objectivity. It converted time from a personal experience into a reality independent of perception. It gave us a framework in which the laws of nature could be observed and quantified.” > **— W. Daniel Hillis**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/The Clock Converted Time Into a Reality Independent of Us by W. Daniel Hillis|The Clock Converted Time Into a Reality Independent of Us by W. Daniel Hillis]] From [[wiki/Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance|Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance]]: This is a complexity comparison, not a claim that billions of people share one phenomenal mind. > "A networked society of billions of human beings could be as complex compared to an individual human being as a human being is to a single nerve cell." > **— M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge**, *2002, Overview of Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/A Networked Humanity Could Exceed Any Individual by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge|A Networked Humanity Could Exceed Any Individual by M. C. Roco and W. S. Bainbridge]] From [[wiki/The Coming Technological Singularity|The Coming Technological Singularity]]: Vinge describes a possible network-level appearance of agency without establishing phenomenal consciousness. > "If networking is widespread enough (into ubiquitous embedded systems), it may seem as if our artifacts as a whole had suddenly wakened." > **— Vernor Vinge**, *1993, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” VISION-21 Symposium* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Connected Artifacts Might Seem to Wake Up by Vernor Vinge|Connected Artifacts Might Seem to Wake Up by Vernor Vinge]] > “What would it be like to be part of a distributed intelligence but still with an individual consciousness? Well for starters, you might expect to see the collective mind 'take over' from time to time, directly guiding the individual minds. In humans, the behavior of angry mobs and frightened crowds seem to qualify as examples of a 'collective mind' in action, with non-linguistic channels of communication usurping the individual capacity for rational behavior.” > **— Alex "Sandy" Pentland**, *2005 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Can Collective Intelligence Take Over Individual Minds by Alex Sandy Pentland|Can Collective Intelligence Take Over Individual Minds by Alex Sandy Pentland]]