Collaborative intelligence
Encyclopedia
Collaborative intelligence is a term used in several disciplines, and has several different meanings. In a business setting, it can describe the result of accessing a network of people. It is also used to denote non-anonymous heterogeneity in multi-agent problem-solving systems
.
Collaborative intelligence was later defined as to require the investigation of aspects of collective intelligence
, namely those that acknowledge identity, as in social networks
, as the foundation for next generation problem-solving ecosystems, modeled on evolutionary adaptation in nature’s ecosystems.
The Internet
, as a rich, but noisy, platform, enables collaborative intelligence ecosystems, such as Wikipedia
, to emerge and evolve, as life itself may have emerged and evolved toward increasingly ordered complexity
. Constraints to direct evolution
toward increased functional effectiveness co-evolve with systems to tag, credit, time-stamp, and sort content. Collaborative intelligence requires capacity for effective search, discovery, integration, visualization, and frameworks to support collaborative problem-solving. Google+
is evolving a platform where next generation social networks
can drive more effective search, a potential platform for collaborative intelligence. Crowdsourcing
can move beyond menial pattern recognition tasks to harness collaborative intelligence, retaining the identity of individual contributors in the social network
.
, so it is useful to find distinguishing aspects.
The term collective intelligence
originally encompassed both collective and collaborative intelligence, and many systems manifest attributes of both. Pierre Lévy coined the term “collective intelligence” in his book of that title, first published in French in 1994. Lévy defined “collective intelligence” to encompass both collective and collaborative intelligence: “a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and in the effective mobilization of skills…” Following publication of Lévy’s book, computer scientists adopted the term collective intelligence
to denote an application within the more general area to which this term now applies in computer science. Specifically, an application that processes input from a large number of discrete responders to specific, generally quantitative, questions (e.g. what will the price of DRAM be next year?) Algorithms homogenize input, maintaining the traditional anonymity of survey responders to generate better-than-average predictions. Note that collective intelligence
in general does not require anonymity as a defining attribute, as shown by examples such as Wikipedia
.
Collaborative intelligence relates to whether prediction
is defined as active, how heuristics are used, and whether analogs to developmental processes for facilitated variation enable systems to evolve non-randomly toward increased functional effectiveness. Recent dependency network studies suggest links between collective and collaborative intelligence. Partial correlation-based Dependency Networks, a new class of correlation-based networks have been shown to uncover hidden relationships between the nodes of the network. Research by Dror Y. Kennett and his Ph.D. supervisor Eshel Ben-Jacob
uncovered hidden information about the underlying structure of the U.S. stock market
that was not present in the standard correlation
networks, and published their findings in 2011.
operates via a multi-agent system
. Individual differences contribute data to the prediction engine. Typical applications of this one embodiment focus on analysis and prediction of financial markets, such as
Collaborative intelligence addresses problems where individual expertise, potentially conflicting priorities of stakeholders, and different interpretations of diverse experts are critical for problem-solving. Potential future applications include:
began to study bacterial self-organization, believing that bacteria hold the key to understanding larger biological systems. He developed new pattern-forming bacteria species, Paenibacillus vortex and Paenibacillus dendritiformis, and became a pioneer in the study of social behaviors of bacteria. P. dendritiformis manifests an intriguing collective faculty, which could be viewed as a precursor of collaborative intelligence, the ability to switch between different morphotypes to better adapt with the environment. Primarily studied are the transitions between the branching (or tip-splitting) morphotype and the chiral morphotype, which is marked by curly branches with well defined handedness. Morphotype transitions can be viewed as identity switching In order to make these switches colonies of bacteria must cooperatively make drastic alterations of their internal genomic state, effectively transforming themselves into cells that look and behave differently in order to generate colonies with an entirely different organization. Scientists have only recently begun to decode, how, using sophisticated chemical communication, bacteria can rapidly adapt to changes in the environment, distribute tasks, learn from experience, prepare for the future and make decisions. Bacteria in a colony, numbering many times the population on Earth, exchange “chemical tweets” to synchronize their behavior.
Ants were first characterized by entomologist W. M. Wheeler
as cells of a single “superorganism” where seemingly independent individuals can cooperate so closely as to become indistinguishable from a single organism. Later research characterized some insect colonies as instances of collective intelligence
. The concept of ant colony optimization algorithms, introduced by Marco Dorigo
, became a dominant theory of evolutionary computation
. Deborah M. Gordon shows that ant colonies operate without central control using algorithms based on a dynamical network of brief interactions. Colonies allocate workers to different tasks, and workers switch from one task to another in response to changing conditions.
The mechanisms of evolution
through which species adapt toward increased functional effectiveness in their ecosystems are the foundation for principles of collaborative intelligence. Topics such as stigmergy
and evolutionary genetic algorithms
are inspired by the life sciences.
Collaborative intelligence is a measure of capacity of a group
, whether small and co-located or large and distributed, to innovate, solve problems, and achieve new discoveries. The classic work of Irving Janis
on Groupthink
(how committees degenerate to the lowest common denominator) has more recently been countered by James Surowiecki
in his study The Wisdom of Crowds
.
A new generation of tools to support collaborative intelligence is poised to evolve from crowdsourcing platforms, recommender systems, and evolutionary computation
. Existing tools to facilitate group problem-solving include collaborative groupware, such as Google+
, Confluence
, JIRA
, Skype
, NetMeeting, WebEx
, and synchronous conferencing
technologies such as instant messaging
, online chat
and shared white boards, which are complemented by asynchronous messaging like electronic mail
, threaded, moderated discussion forum
s, web logs, and group Wiki
s. Managing the Intelligent Enterprise relies on these tools, as well as methods for group member interaction; promotion of creative thinking; group membership feedback; quality control and peer review; and a documented group memory or knowledge base. As groups work together, they develop a shared memory, which is accessible through the collaborative artifacts created by the group, including meeting minutes, transcripts from threaded discussions, and drawings. The shared memory (group memory) is also accessible through the memories of group members; current interest focuses on how technology can support and augment the effectiveness of shared past memory and capacity for future problem-solving. Metaknowledge characterizes how knowledge content interacts with its knowledge context in cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional, or global distributed collaboration.
Multi-agent system
A multi-agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve...
.
Overview
The term was used in 1999 in a business context to describe the behavior of an ecosystem of thought. This defines Collaborative Intelligence, or CQ, as "the ability to build, contribute to and manage power found in networks of people.".Collaborative intelligence was later defined as to require the investigation of aspects of collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
, namely those that acknowledge identity, as in social networks
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
, as the foundation for next generation problem-solving ecosystems, modeled on evolutionary adaptation in nature’s ecosystems.
The Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, as a rich, but noisy, platform, enables collaborative intelligence ecosystems, such as Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, to emerge and evolve, as life itself may have emerged and evolved toward increasingly ordered complexity
Complexity
In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...
. Constraints to direct evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
toward increased functional effectiveness co-evolve with systems to tag, credit, time-stamp, and sort content. Collaborative intelligence requires capacity for effective search, discovery, integration, visualization, and frameworks to support collaborative problem-solving. Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
is evolving a platform where next generation social networks
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
can drive more effective search, a potential platform for collaborative intelligence. Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community through an open call....
can move beyond menial pattern recognition tasks to harness collaborative intelligence, retaining the identity of individual contributors in the social network
Social network
A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
.
Distinguishing Collective from Collaborative Intelligence
In some disciplines, the definition of Collaborative Intelligence has much in common with Collective IntelligenceCollective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
, so it is useful to find distinguishing aspects.
The term collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
originally encompassed both collective and collaborative intelligence, and many systems manifest attributes of both. Pierre Lévy coined the term “collective intelligence” in his book of that title, first published in French in 1994. Lévy defined “collective intelligence” to encompass both collective and collaborative intelligence: “a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and in the effective mobilization of skills…” Following publication of Lévy’s book, computer scientists adopted the term collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
to denote an application within the more general area to which this term now applies in computer science. Specifically, an application that processes input from a large number of discrete responders to specific, generally quantitative, questions (e.g. what will the price of DRAM be next year?) Algorithms homogenize input, maintaining the traditional anonymity of survey responders to generate better-than-average predictions. Note that collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
in general does not require anonymity as a defining attribute, as shown by examples such as Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
.
Collaborative intelligence relates to whether prediction
Prediction
A prediction or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge...
is defined as active, how heuristics are used, and whether analogs to developmental processes for facilitated variation enable systems to evolve non-randomly toward increased functional effectiveness. Recent dependency network studies suggest links between collective and collaborative intelligence. Partial correlation-based Dependency Networks, a new class of correlation-based networks have been shown to uncover hidden relationships between the nodes of the network. Research by Dror Y. Kennett and his Ph.D. supervisor Eshel Ben-Jacob
Eshel Ben-Jacob
Eshel Ben-Jacob , is a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at the University of California San Diego...
uncovered hidden information about the underlying structure of the U.S. stock market
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
that was not present in the standard correlation
Correlation
In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....
networks, and published their findings in 2011.
Applications: Collective vs Collaborative Intelligence
In one embodiment, Collective intelligenceCollective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
operates via a multi-agent system
Multi-agent system
A multi-agent system is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems that are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or a monolithic system to solve...
. Individual differences contribute data to the prediction engine. Typical applications of this one embodiment focus on analysis and prediction of financial markets, such as
- analysis of the macro-economic consequences of many individual decisions arising from the micro-behaviors of individual investors;
- analysis and prediction of individual voter choices on election outcomes; and
- prediction of financial values of commodities by gathering a large number of inputs from many sources, as in market forecasts.
Collaborative intelligence addresses problems where individual expertise, potentially conflicting priorities of stakeholders, and different interpretations of diverse experts are critical for problem-solving. Potential future applications include:
- competitions, where submissions must be integrated to produce a synergistic outcome;
- smart search, where social networksSocial networkA social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...
of searchers on related topics co-define search results; - professional groups, interest collectives, citizen science and other communities, where knowledge-sharing is a prerequisite for effective outcomes;
- planning, development, and sustainable remediationSustainable remediationSustainable Remediation is a term adopted internationally and encompasses sustainable approaches, as described by the Brundtland Report, to the investigation, assessment and management of potentially contaminated land and groundwater.The process of identifying Sustainable Remediation is defined...
project management; - smart systems to transform independent cities into collaborative, ecological urban networks;
- global citizens facing climate changeClimate changeClimate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
, asking: What can we do? Who’s doing what now?
Precursors in the Life Sciences
In the late 1980s, Eshel Ben-JacobEshel Ben-Jacob
Eshel Ben-Jacob , is a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at the University of California San Diego...
began to study bacterial self-organization, believing that bacteria hold the key to understanding larger biological systems. He developed new pattern-forming bacteria species, Paenibacillus vortex and Paenibacillus dendritiformis, and became a pioneer in the study of social behaviors of bacteria. P. dendritiformis manifests an intriguing collective faculty, which could be viewed as a precursor of collaborative intelligence, the ability to switch between different morphotypes to better adapt with the environment. Primarily studied are the transitions between the branching (or tip-splitting) morphotype and the chiral morphotype, which is marked by curly branches with well defined handedness. Morphotype transitions can be viewed as identity switching In order to make these switches colonies of bacteria must cooperatively make drastic alterations of their internal genomic state, effectively transforming themselves into cells that look and behave differently in order to generate colonies with an entirely different organization. Scientists have only recently begun to decode, how, using sophisticated chemical communication, bacteria can rapidly adapt to changes in the environment, distribute tasks, learn from experience, prepare for the future and make decisions. Bacteria in a colony, numbering many times the population on Earth, exchange “chemical tweets” to synchronize their behavior.
Ants were first characterized by entomologist W. M. Wheeler
William Morton Wheeler
William Morton Wheeler, Ph.D. was an American entomologist, myrmecologist and Harvard professor.-Early life:...
as cells of a single “superorganism” where seemingly independent individuals can cooperate so closely as to become indistinguishable from a single organism. Later research characterized some insect colonies as instances of collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Collective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
. The concept of ant colony optimization algorithms, introduced by Marco Dorigo
Marco Dorigo
Marco Dorigo is a research director for the Belgian Funds for Scientific Research , a professor in the computer science department of the University of Paderborn and a co-director of , the artificial intelligence lab of the Université Libre de Bruxelles.He is the proponent of the "ant colony...
, became a dominant theory of evolutionary computation
Evolutionary computation
In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
. Deborah M. Gordon shows that ant colonies operate without central control using algorithms based on a dynamical network of brief interactions. Colonies allocate workers to different tasks, and workers switch from one task to another in response to changing conditions.
The mechanisms of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
through which species adapt toward increased functional effectiveness in their ecosystems are the foundation for principles of collaborative intelligence. Topics such as stigmergy
Stigmergy
Stigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent...
and evolutionary genetic algorithms
Genetic algorithm
A genetic algorithm is a search heuristic that mimics the process of natural evolution. This heuristic is routinely used to generate useful solutions to optimization and search problems...
are inspired by the life sciences.
Business Applications
CQ or C-IQ (Collaborative IQ or Collaborative Intelligence) measures the collaborative effectiveness of a group, which can be greater or less than the aggregate knowledge and capability possessed by individual group members.Collaborative intelligence is a measure of capacity of a group
Group (sociology)
In the social sciences a social group can be defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of unity...
, whether small and co-located or large and distributed, to innovate, solve problems, and achieve new discoveries. The classic work of Irving Janis
Irving Janis
Irving Lester Janis was a research psychologist at Yale University and a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley most famous for his theory of "groupthink" which described the systematic errors made by groups when taking collective decisions...
on Groupthink
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of alternatives. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without...
(how committees degenerate to the lowest common denominator) has more recently been countered by James Surowiecki
James Surowiecki
James Michael Surowiecki is an American journalist. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".-Background:...
in his study The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better...
.
A new generation of tools to support collaborative intelligence is poised to evolve from crowdsourcing platforms, recommender systems, and evolutionary computation
Evolutionary computation
In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
. Existing tools to facilitate group problem-solving include collaborative groupware, such as Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
, Confluence
Confluence (software)
Confluence is an enterprise wiki software. Written in Java and mainly used in corporate environments, Confluence is developed and marketed by Atlassian. Confluence is sold as either on-premises software or as a hosted solution...
, JIRA
JIRA
Jira may refer to:* JIRA, software-engineering package* Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis* Jira, also known as Zilla, fictional character* Jira * Jira...
, Skype
Skype
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice and video calls and chat over the Internet. Calls to other users within the Skype service are free, while calls to both traditional landline telephones and mobile phones can be made for a fee using a debit-based user account system...
, NetMeeting, WebEx
WebEx
WebEx Communications Inc. is a Cisco company that provides on-demand collaboration, online meeting, web conferencing and videoconferencing applications...
, and synchronous conferencing
Synchronous conferencing
Synchronous conferencing is the formal term used in science, in particular in computer-mediated communication, collaboration and learning, to describe online chat technologies. It has arisen at a time when the term chat had a negative connotation...
technologies such as instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
, online chat
Online chat
Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers an instantaneous transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions...
and shared white boards, which are complemented by asynchronous messaging like electronic mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, threaded, moderated discussion forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
s, web logs, and group Wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s. Managing the Intelligent Enterprise relies on these tools, as well as methods for group member interaction; promotion of creative thinking; group membership feedback; quality control and peer review; and a documented group memory or knowledge base. As groups work together, they develop a shared memory, which is accessible through the collaborative artifacts created by the group, including meeting minutes, transcripts from threaded discussions, and drawings. The shared memory (group memory) is also accessible through the memories of group members; current interest focuses on how technology can support and augment the effectiveness of shared past memory and capacity for future problem-solving. Metaknowledge characterizes how knowledge content interacts with its knowledge context in cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional, or global distributed collaboration.
See also
- Collaborative innovation network
- Dependency networkDependency networkThe dependency network approach provides a new system level analysis of the activity and topology of directed networks. The approach extracts causal topological relations between the networks nodes , and provides an important step towards inference of causal activity relations between the network...
- Human ecologyHuman ecologyHuman ecology is the subdiscipline of ecology that focuses on humans. More broadly, it is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The term 'human ecology' first appeared in a sociological study in 1921...
- Microbial intelligenceMicrobial IntelligenceMicrobial intelligence is the intelligence shown by microorganisms. The concept encompasses complex adaptive behaviour shown by single cells, and altruistic and/or cooperative behavior in populations of like or unlike cells mediated by chemical signalling that induces physiological or behavioral...
- Swarm intelligenceSwarm intelligenceSwarm intelligence is the collective behaviour of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence...
- Synthetic biologySynthetic biologySynthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. It encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies, and disciplines with a variety of definitions...