Collective intelligence

Collective intelligence is the shared ability of a group to think, solve problems, and make decisions in ways that often go beyond what any one person could do alone. It happens when people, animals, or even machines combine their knowledge, skills, and resources to reach a common goal. Groups can gather information from many sources, compare different ideas, and come up with solutions that are more accurate or creative than those from individuals working separately. Collective intelligence can happen in small teams, large organizations, whole societies, or even global online networks. It is more than just combining opinions, it involves communication, coordination, and feedback, which help the group adapt and improve over time.[1][2][3]

There are many examples of collective intelligence. In human society, Wikipedia is a clear case, thousands of volunteers from around the world work together to write and update articles, creating a resource much larger than any single person could produce.[4] In nature, ant colonies show collective intelligence when ants follow simple rules but, together, find the shortest paths to food and build complex nests.[5] In science, “citizen science” projects invite volunteers to help collect or analyze data, such as identifying galaxies in telescope images or tracking bird migration.[6] Other examples include prediction markets, where group betting often predicts future events more accurately than experts,[7] and “wisdom of crowds” experiments, where averaging many independent guesses can give surprisingly accurate results, such as estimating an object’s weight.[8]

How well collective intelligence works depends on how members share information, divide tasks, and handle disagreements.[9] Groups with diverse perspectives, equal participation, and strong communication tend to perform better.[10] But problems can reduce effectiveness, such as “groupthink,” where people follow the majority and ignore other ideas,[11] or “information cascades,” where early opinions shape later ones even if they are wrong.[12] Technology can help collective intelligence by making it easier for large groups to work together and share data,[13] but it can also create problems, such as spreading misinformation or forming “echo chambers” where only similar viewpoints are heard.[14]

Today, collective intelligence is increasingly connected to artificial intelligence and computer networks.[15] Humans and machines can work together, with AI processing huge amounts of data and people using their judgment to choose the best solution, creating a human-AI hybrid form of problem solving.[16] Examples include disaster mapping,[17] large-scale simulations, and open-source software development.[18] Understanding collective intelligence is important for improving decision-making, education, organizational management, and solving global problems like climate change, pandemics, and resource shortages. By studying how groups combine their strengths, we can make problem-solving faster, more accurate, and more innovative.[1][2]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lévy, Pierre; Lévy, Pierre (1999). Collective intelligence: mankind's emering world in cyberspace. Helix books. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books. ISBN 978-0-7382-0261-7.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Malone, Thomas W.; Bernstein, Michael S., eds. (2015). Handbook of collective intelligence. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-54584-6.
  3. ↑ Woolley, Anita Williams; Chabris, Christopher F.; Pentland, Alex; Hashmi, Nada; Malone, Thomas W. (2010-10-29). "Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups". Science. 330 (6004): 686–688. doi:10.1126/science.1193147.
  4. ↑ Giles, Jim (2005-12-01). "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head". Nature. 438 (7070): 900–901. doi:10.1038/438900a. ISSN 1476-4687.
  5. ↑ Camazine, Scott, ed. (2003). Self-organization in biological systems. Princeton studies in complexity (2. print., and 1. paperback print ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-691-11624-2.
  6. ↑ Bonney, Rick; Cooper, Caren B.; Dickinson, Janis; Kelling, Steve; Phillips, Tina; Rosenberg, Kenneth V.; Shirk, Jennifer (2009). "Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science Knowledge and Scientific Literacy". BioScience. 59 (11): 977–984. doi:10.1525/bio.2009.59.11.9. ISSN 1525-3244.
  7. ↑ Wolfers, Justin; Zitzewitz, Eric (2004). "Prediction Markets". Journal of Economic Perspectives. 18 (2): 107–126. doi:10.1257/0895330041371321. ISSN 0895-3309.
  8. ↑ Galton, Francis (1907-03-01). "Vox Populi". Nature. 75 (1949): 450–451. doi:10.1038/075450a0. ISSN 1476-4687.
  9. ↑ Hackman, J. Richard (2011). Collaborative intelligence: using teams to solve hard problems. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60509-990-3.
  10. ↑ Hong, Lu; Page, Scott E. (2004-11-16). "Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 101 (46): 16385–16389. doi:10.1073/pnas.0403723101. PMC 528939. PMID 15534225.
  11. ↑ Janis, Irving Lester (2013). Groupthink: psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes (2. ed., [Nachdr.] ed.). Boston: Wadsworth. ISBN 978-0-395-31704-4.
  12. ↑ Bikhchandani, Sushil; Hirshleifer, David; Welch, Ivo (1992). "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades". Journal of Political Economy. 100 (5): 992–1026. doi:10.1086/261849. ISSN 0022-3808.
  13. ↑ Shirky, Clay (2009). Here comes everybody: the power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-311494-9.
  14. ↑ Sunstein, C. R. (2001). Echo chambers: Bush v. Gore, impeachment, and beyond. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400809059.
  15. ↑ Dellermann, Dominik; Ebel, Philipp; Söllner, Matthias; Leimeister, Jan Marco (2019-10-01). "Hybrid Intelligence". Business & Information Systems Engineering. 61 (5): 637–643. doi:10.1007/s12599-019-00595-2. ISSN 1867-0202.
  16. ↑ Malone, Thomas W.; Laubacher, Robert; Dellarocas, Chrysanthos (2020). "The collective intelligence genome". IEEE Engineering Management Review. 38 (3): 38–52. doi:10.1109/EMR.2010.5559142. ISSN 0360-8581.
  17. ↑ Meier, Patrick (2015). Digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response. Boca Raton: CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-4822-4839-5.
  18. ↑ Raymond, Eric S. (1999). The cathedral and the bazaar: musings on Linux and Open Source by an accidental revolutionary (1st ed.). Beijing Köln: O'Reilly. ISBN 978-1-56592-724-7.


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