MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies -- especially the Internet -- now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways. The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.

The basic research question is: How can people and computers be connected so that -- collectively -- they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?

With its combination of expertise in computer science, brain sciences, and management, MIT is uniquely suited to address this question. We hope this work will lead to new scientific understanding in a variety of disciplines and practical advances in many areas of business and society.

Collective intelligence has existed for at least as long as humans have. Tribes of hunter-gatherers, nations, and modern corporations all act collectively with varying degrees of intelligence. But this ancient phenomenon is now occurring in dramatically new forms. For example:

(*) Google uses the knowledge millions of people have stored in the World Wide Web to provide remarkably useful answers to users' questions
(*) Wikipedia motivates thousands of volunteers around the world to create the world's largest encyclopedia
(*) Innocentive lets companies easily tap the talents of the global scientific community for innovative solutions to tough R&D problems

With new communication technologies-especially the Internet-huge numbers of people all over the planet can now work together in ways that were never before possible in the history of humanity. It is thus more important than ever for us to understand collective intelligence at a deep level so we can create and take advantage of these new possibilities.

That is the goal of the newly-named MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.

One way of framing the basic research question is: How can people and computers be connected so that-collectively-they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?

With its combination of expertise in computer science, brain sciences, and management, MIT is uniquely suited to address this question. To take advantage of these diverse capabilities, the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence involves faculty from many parts of MIT: Sloan School of Management, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Media Laboratory, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Leadership Center.

Types of research needed
We believe that many companies and other groups will be creating new forms of collective intelligence in the coming years. We also believe that research universities like MIT can provide important contributions to this endeavor by:

(a) collecting and distilling the results of experience from the real-world "experiments" many people will be trying

(b) experimenting with innovative new techniques to advance the state-of-the-art

(c) conducting rigorous scientific research to find the reliable patterns underlying subjective anecdotes and accidental successes or failures, and

(d) developing theoretical frameworks to help understand all these things

How can the results of research on collective intelligence be used?

A primary application of all this research will be to help use new information technologies solve old problems in new ways. For example, the Center has current or proposed projects dealing with the following business and societal problems:

(*) How can large groups of people produce high quality written documents? For instance, how can the lessons of Wikipedia be applied to other groups and other kinds of documents? What kinds of technologies and motivational structures are needed?

(*) How can groups of people make accurate predictions of future events? For instance, in prediction markets, people buy and sell predictions about uncertain future events, and the prices that emerge in these markets are often better predictors than opinion polls or individual experts. When and how do these prediction markets work best? How can they be combined with simulations, neural nets, and other techniques?

(*) How can we harness the intelligence of thousands of people around the world to help solve the problems of global climate change? For instance, how can we use innovative combinations of computer-based simulations and explicit representation of argumentation to help people identify and analyze different policy alternatives?

(*) How can we create an on-line, searchable library of books from many languages and historical eras? For instance, how can we harness a combination of human and machine intelligence to recognize the images of words in these books?

(*) How can we help create commercially sustainable products and services for low-income communities around the world? For instance, how can we use cutting-edge technology to help a world-wide network of entrepreneurs and investors rapidly find, analyze, and replicate successful projects?

These examples are only a few of the myriad ways collective intelligence can be applied. More broadly, we hope that the work in this Center will lead to both new scientific understanding in a variety of disciplines and practical advances in many areas of business and society.