MIT Looks to Give Group Think a Good Name

netbuzz writes "With Friday's opening of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, researchers there hope to address this central question: "How can people and computers be connected so that — collectively — they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?""

Comments

text is a insufficient medium for this

[chriss]

I'll give them the benefit of trying to start a realistic project without any fancy, not-yet existing technology, and therefore accept that their attempt for collective intelligence is writing a business book in what they call Wikipedia-style, so far with 300 participants. But I believe that books or the written word in general is not the right tool for collective intelligence and in fact right now stopping us from making some advances e.g. in education.

We've all grown up in a culture dominated by information transfer via text and been trained by our educational system to be producers of text ourselves. I'm currently doing it on slashdot, everybody is communicating via email and IM, because that's what we've learned.

But there has been a lot of research showing that richer media (not flash, but visualization and simulation) are often much more appropriate to describe complex subjects. There has been a trend for a long time to stuff text books with more graphics, diagrams, pictures, and educational software with videos, animations and so on. A picture can say more than a thousand words if placed in the right context.

Unfortunately we are not yet trained to use more than a basic hypertext processor for media creation. How many teachers can even draw a diagram? How many websites have useful graphics? If you look at wikipedia, it's basically a large book with a few photos and even fewer good diagrams, no simulations or whatever. So when reading e.g. wikipedia it is up to the reader again to create an internal visualization and hope to match the image intended by the authors.

I believe to make progress in collective intelligence we have to move our media production to match the mental capabilities of humans. Text was very useful when it was the only technical viable solution, but today there are many more and better media types, only our culture of media creation is behind the possibilities by some decades. YouTube may be a nice step in the right direction and what Lawrence Lessing said about creating CC licensed rich flash content also is. But starting another wiki style pseudo book is not.

Borg

[FhnuZoag]

Come on, it's freaking obvious. What else can it be?

I'm sorry, but...

[susano_otter]

... I think it's going to take something more than MIT smarty men, to make committees useful.

Look out, it's coming!

[FordPrfct]

"I believe that many people will be doing lots of 'natural experiments' with collective intelligence in the next few years -- with or without us,"

Because God Knows there haven't been any going on so far...

cluster

[brenddie]

Sometimes is hard for a group of "smart" people to agree on something,I rather have them experiment with a cluster of idiots (available in large quantities,they usually agree on anything as long as is stupid) and have the system do the oposite of what they choose.

It's a people problem, not a technical one

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Put any discussion like this in a technical/Geek forum and the debate becomes about what kind of technology will make this all work. Sorry folks, even with a perfect UI or whatever, this is fundamentally a people problem. The major limitations are not how to deal with html, flash, IRC or whatever, but about how to deal with clashing egos, language & cultural barriers etc and how to arbitrate when experts disagree etc.

The opposite is true

[Chemisor]

We all know that when you get lots of people together, the result is less intelligence than the sum of individual intelligences, not more. It is called "groupthink". It is why meetings never result in anything useful. It is why every collectively designed standard is a piece of garbage. Decisions require a decider, period. If the decider is intelligent, you get good decisions. If the decider is stupid, you get stupid decisions. If the decider is the president, well... I'll pass on that one. The point is, there is no such thing as a "collective intelligence"; group members hinder each other, not help, due to each individual following his own agenda.

Re:The opposite is true

[treeves]

There is such a thing as groupthink and committees can make stupid decisions and meetings do seem to reduce one's intelligence, but. . .
You are oversimplifying. There are cases of collective intelligence, and examples of good work coming from groups.
For example, the group that produced the King James Bible, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program, GIMPS (not GNU Image Manipulation Program, but the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search - OK, it probably doesn't belong in this list, as it's less "intelligence" and more brute force throwing processing power at a fairly simple but time-consuming problem).
I'm sure there are other good examples people could give. Those are just ones that quickly come to my mind. Some have suggested that the human brain is itself a form of collective intelligence. Lots of little "subroutines" working together to form a "sum greater than the parts", or something like that. It's been awhile but I've read a couple of the references cited here: http://ericrollins.home.mindspring.com/evoCellACM/ index.html and they suggest that idea.

Re:The opposite is true

[nostriluu]

I know it's fun to think in stereotypes (certainly makes things simpler), but try reading the book "the wisdom of crowds" for a few good examples of how mixed crowds can be smarter than the smartest people, consistently.

The problem of group think can be a matter of everyone agreeing on principles, so no other courses can seem reasonable, which is just as prevalent in groups of "smart" people; it takes a mixed group to question assumptions (if people dare speak up against all the "experts").

Just a name change?

[MollyB]

After reading the article, it seems like old wine in new bottles. They have coined "Collective Intellegence" (formerly the Center for Coordination Science) apparently for public relations purposes, and the information given reveals no new technology. The only project mentioned is a business-oriented book written wikipedia-style.

Is there more to this than groupware-on-steroids? Would like to hear the possible downside to this approach, since analog people don't mesh seamlessly with digital technology...

Easy way to make true AI

[CrazyJim1]

I posted this before if you want True AI If you want smarter networks. Take Digg, then add groups.
For example you have if you're a Republican or a Democrat.
Democrats mod stuff down Republicans may mod up. So they should each have their own scoring section.
There are a LOT of groups people can be a part of. Even social cliques if you so desire.
Eventually people who's articles that get modded up a lot will start with a degree of moderation to them.
Or you can search on your favorite authors.


I hate the internet because I always know what is coming next, but never the motivation to code it.