Human Swarms, a real-time method for collective intelligence

Abstract

Much research has been done in the field of collective intelligence to aggregate input from human populations with the goal of amplifying the abilities of the groups. Nearly all prior research follows a similar model where input is collected from human participants in isolation and then aggregated statistically after the fact. The paper introduces a radically different approach in which the human participants is not aggregated statistically, but through a real-time dynamic control in which the participants act, react, and interact as a part of a system modeled after swarms in nature. Early testing of these "human swarms" suggest great potential for amplifying the intelligence of human groups, exceeding traditional aggregation methods.

on the simulation of collaborative
systems as it relates to the emergence of real-time collective intelligence. While theoretical studies are of great research value, there’s a growing need for real-world platforms that test the emergence of collective intelligence among human users. This short paper introduces such a platform. It enables networks of online collaborators to converge on questions, decisions, and dilemmas in real-time, functioning as a unified dynamic system. The dynamic system has been modeled after biological swarms, which is why refer to the process as “social swarming” or "human swarming". Early testing of human swarms suggests a great potential for harnessing collective intelligence.

Full text

Human Swarms, a real-time method for collective intelligence
Louis B. Rosenberg
Unanimous A.I., San Francisco, California, USA
Louis@UnanimousAI.com
Overview
Although substantial research has explored the emergence of
collective intelligence in real-time human-based collaborative
systems, much of this work has focused on rigid scenarios such
as the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD). (Pinheiro et al., 2012; Santos
et al., 2012). While such work is of great research value, there’s
a growing need for a flexible real-world platform that fosters
collective intelligence in authentic decision-making situations.
This paper introduces a new platform called UNUM that allows
groups of online users to collectively answer questions, make
decisions, and resolve dilemmas by working together in unified
dynamic systems. Modeled after biological swarms, the UNUM
platform enables online groups to work in real-time synchrony,
collaboratively exploring a decision-space and converging on
preferred solutionsin a matter of seconds. We call the process
“social swarming” and early real-world testing suggests it has
great potential for harnessing collective intelligence.
Background
Humanity is a tribal species, owing our evolutionary success
to our ability to collaborate in social groups (Axelrod, 1981;
Rand et al., 2011). This said, modern life has expanded the
scope of human interactions so widely, our tribal norms may
no longer be sufficient to maintain a cooperative stance
among dependent parties (Green, 2013). Even among small
social groups, collaborators rarely congregate in the same
place at the same time, decisions often being made via email
and text. For larger groups, discussion forums are commonly
used for distributed online decisions, with conclusions based
on asynchronous user inputs such as “likes” and “up-votes”.
Unfortunately, asynchronous polling doesn’t leverage our
natural capacity for compromise and consensus-building. In
fact, recent studies suggest that asynchronous polling, as used
by mainstream social media sites and forums, greatly distorts
group-wise decisions by introducing biasing effects known
commonly as herding or snowballing (Muchnik et al., 2013 ).
From Polls to Swarms
As introduced above, there is a growing need for new online
platforms that facilitate collective intelligence and support
collaborative decision-making without employing traditional
asynchronous polling. To address this, we developed UNUM,
a real-time collective intelligence engine that is modeled after
natural biological swarms. UNUM enables groups of users to
answer questions in synchrony, the participants working as a
unified dynamic system through real-time feedback loops.
When using the UNUM platform, swarms of online users
can answer questions and make decisions by collaboratively
moving a graphical puck to select among a set of possible
answers. The puck is generated by a central server and
modeled as a real-world physical system with a defined mass,
damping and friction. Each participant in the swarm connects
to the server and is provided a controllable graphical magnet
that allows the user to freely apply force vectors on the puck
in real time (Fig. 1). The puck moves in response to swarm’s
influence, not based on the input of any individual participant,
but based on a dynamic feedback loop that is closed around all
swarm members. In this way, real-time synchronous control is
enabled across a swarm of distributed networked users.
Figure 1: a human swarm of user-controlled magnets collaborate in
synchrony to move a graphical puck as a unified collective intelligence.
Through the collaborative control of the graphical puck, a
real-time physical negotiation emerges among the members of
the online swarm. This occurs because all of the participating
users are able to push and pull on the puck at the same time,
collectively exploring the decision-space and converging upon
the most agreeable answers. But do the answers have value?
Early Testing and Results
To test the value of human swarms, we enlisted groups of
novice users and asked them to make predictions on verifiable
events: the outcome of the NFL playoffs, the Golden Globes,
and the 2015 Academy Awards. In all cases, the predictions
made by swarms were substantially more accurate than the
predictions made by the individuals who comprised each
swarm. In fact, in all cases the predictions made by swarms
out-performed even the highest performing individual in each
group. The swarms also out-performed the average polling
results across the full population of participants. This suggests
that swarms offer a powerful alternative to the traditional poll-
based methods of harnessing the wisdom of groups.
Louis B. Rosenberg (2015) Human Swarms, a real-time method for collective intelligence. Proceedings of the European
Conference on Artificial Life 2015, pp. 658-659
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7551/978-0-262-33027-5-ch117

For example, when predicting the 2015 Academy Awards,
we polled 48 individuals with a written survey, asking them to
predict the top 15 award categories. Using the most popular
predictions to represent “the wisdom of the crowd”, the group
collectively achieved 6 correct predictions for the top 15
award categories (40% success). This was our baseline
dataset, the low success rate reflecting the fact that this group
of users had no special knowledge about movies.
To test swarming, we then selected a 7 person sub-group of
the full population and asked them make the same predictions,
but now as a unified dynamic system. The 7 individuals were
typical performers on the written poll, ensuring equity with
the full 48 person population. Each of the 7 individuals were
networked over standard internet connections to a central
server from different remote locations.
Working as a unified swarm, the group of 7 individuals
achieved 11 correct predictions for the top 15 award
categories (73% success). In other words, a sub-group that
was only 15% the size of the full population had a success rate
that was nearly double. We believe this is a highly promising
result and speaks to the potential for harnessing the wisdom of
social groups through real-time swarming.
It should also be noted that real-time swarming is a high-
speed process, all decisions made within 60 seconds or less.
Thus, in addition to improved accuracy of predictions, this
form of collective intelligence is uniquely efficient.
Figure 2: screen-shot of a real-time social swarm in the process of
predicting the Best Actor category of the 2015 Academy Awards.
As a point of reference, experts at the New York Times
made similar predictions for the 2015 Academy Awards.
These experts possessed far deeper knowledge than the novice
members of our study. We assume these experts invested far
more than 60 seconds on each prediction made. Still, the New
York Times only showed a 55% success rate.1 Thus, a group
of 7 novices, functioning as a social swarm, made predictions
that surpassed industry experts. Although not conclusive, this
result suggests that social swarming may provide a means of
achieving expert-level insights from groups of non-experts.
Discussion and Conclusions
Why are swarms better than polls? Our analysis suggest that
while polls are good at characterizing the average views of a
population, without real-time feedback control, polls offer no
means for groups to explore options and find consensus.
Swarms, on the other hand, allow users to continually update
their intent in real-time, assessing how their views combine
with the other participants to achieve an acceptable outcome.
In this way, each participant in a swarm is not expressing a
singular view, but is continually assessing his own personal
conviction across the range of possible options, weighing his
confidence and preference in real-time. With all participants
doing this in synchrony, the swarm quickly converges on
solutions that seem to maximize the collective confidence and
preference of the full group. We believe this is why swarms
are able so efficiently capture the group’s wisdom.
We are currently conducting additional studies to quantify
the effectiveness of social swarms, not just to make accurate
predictions but in facilitating group decisions. Of particular
interest is whether decisions made by real-time swarms are
more or less satisfactory to the participants than decisions
made by traditional polling. Initial results suggest that social
swarms yield more satisfactory decisions than votes or polls.
Finally, to help drive exploration of social swarming, we
have made the UNUM platform accessible to any academics
who wish to run their own user tests. Academic researcher can
request a free account at www.unum.ai
Acknowledgements: This study was funded by Unanimous A.I. with
support from California State University (CalPoly, San Luis Obispo).
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1 http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/oscars-2015-the-
carpetbaggers-predictions/
Louis B. Rosenberg (2015) Human Swarms, a real-time method for collective intelligence. Proceedings of the European
Conference on Artificial Life 2015, pp. 658-659