(2018-01-25) How To Mobilize Group Intelligence

How to mobilize group intelligence. Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World Geoff Mulgan

Mulgan probes a subtler, conflicted reality: that groups of people and machines might not assemble in ways that lead to genuine advances in intelligence. For every artificial pancreas, there are many networks designed to sell advertising, accelerate the dissemination of cat pictures, spread fake news or turn online groups into online mobs.

such large-scale initiatives don’t necessarily help us to make important decisions such as formulating law or policy, organizing institutions or deciding between two complex or highly contested choices. So, despite our hyper-connectivity, we are not inevitably smarter, healthier or more just.

to avoid networked stupidity, we must focus on the structures, rules, skills, tools and standards that, as Mulgan writes, “turn fragmented, conflicting groups into something closer to a collective intelligence”. Organizing these components is the role of public institutions, Mulgan avers. The process of doing so is one that Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman describe in their book Networked (MIT, 2012) as the “choreography and exertion” necessary to manage online collaboration.

the fifth annual Collective Intelligence Conference, held in June in New York City, focused on democracy. Experts from computer science to the social sciences came together to examine what democratic institutions need to do to better tap the intelligence and expertise of those they govern. As Mulgan concludes, answering this question is hampered by a stark fact. Although parliaments fund and universities conduct research, neither invest much in ways to improve how institutions actually mobilize collective intelligence.