“Almost everything we humans have ever done has been done not by lone individuals, but by groups of people working together.”

Professor Thomas Malone, MIT Sloan School of Management

What is Collective Intelligence? I imagine a room, a deep basement filled with groups of super computers. The room is filled with a collective humming - they are humming to each other. The computers flash neon lights and crunch ones and zeros. As we walk through this room leaping over spans of cables, there is a realisation the humming is infinite, the ether is only blanketed when you stop looking forward. Mindhive is a collation of these supercomputers —extraordinary people spaned across the world. They are building this collective intelligence so they can collaboratively hum to each other solving the issues of the now and future.

How does this differ from crowdsourcing? The difference between crowdsourcing and collective intelligence is that crowdsourcing calls upon for an individual’s contribution towards an arisen concern or issue to help.  Collective intelligence incorporates this idea of calling upon the public figures for help. However, it aims for a magnanimous collaboration between these individuals as a hive of intelligence to tackle the problem rather than singular acts of self-indulgence – it prompts people to Mindhive tasks. 

Nesta, a UK based innovation foundation shares this sentiment — that the power of a  collective intelligence is the conduit to utilise technology for sustainable development. Nesta believe there is no ‘back to normal’ , coronavirus has induced an inflated level of social, economic and political insecurity. This insecurity has forced a wedge between groups and needs to be bridged in order to establish stability and sustainable progression as a society. Mindhiving social issues is a remote approach to bridging this gap between groups by giving access to a platform where many minds are able to collate together.  

On October 16th, Nesta hosted a unrestricted conversational panel exploring how collective intelligence is here, it’s not a foreign concept but an underutilised one. It also explores the issues related to having disjointed levels of intelligence pools in society obstructed by a lack of mutual trust. Therefore, how can we build successful collective intelligence?  Largely, it comes down to battling the theme of trepidation between different groups in society unable to build trust between them. This trust relates to believing in the utility that individuals within this collective are able to offer as well as that the attributes they pertain are being used to achieve what’s best for the whole.

“We need to avoid relying on tech to provide the solution. The thing that really makes it fly are the behaviours we exhibit when we collaborate.”

Julien Cornebise, Honorary Associate Professor, UCL

The panel talked about the benefit of being able to use a collective brain trust to manage appropriately the privacy of data collections that an AI software would collate. However, my question is how the group agree on a mutual level of morality and values to implement on an AI system. This would require – you guessed it – trust. The trust is to understand that the group are all considering meaningfully the interest of the group and what it aims to achieve. Trust is not bred overnight, but it can be facilitated by having a medium that people are comfortable with and proposes itself as a space where mutual understandings can be established. You can better trust that you will get to your destination in a Mercedez instead of a shrieking Daewoo. 

Another inhibitor to the success of a collective power is the sheer amount it is undervalued — especially by those who would gain most from it. Nesta measures that 122 billion pounds per year is generated in the UK alone by ‘people power’. Therefore, they propose Governments should create new ways to include the full value of people power in decisions about public spending, through actions such as updating the Social Value Act and including the value of people power in official accounting measures of activity. Building value also comes from recognising the avenues to establish these collective intelligience, you can’t build a collective without a place to gather – whether that is in person or over the internet and you mindhive it

Contrary to my harbouring of negativity on why collective intelligence has been restricted,  This is missing a paragraph to tie it in together   

Aleks Berditchevskaia (Senior Researcher, Centre for Collective Intelligence Design) believes collective intelligence can be categorised into four different segments: understanding problems, seeking solutions, making decisions and learning and adapting. Mindhiving a problem takes you through these four categories periodically with your group of supercomputers. From when you post your query it shakes the curiosity of the public that leads to apple hitting your head.