27,254 followers
🤔Weekend Reading 👉 A few years ago, I began exploring how AI and collective intelligence could converge to address complex challenges—from public health to democratic innovation. One suggestion of my paper at the time included augmented collective intelligence: the idea that technology could help groups think better together, not just individuals work faster alone. (see: https://lnkd.in/ezMRya9) 📢 A new paper by Thomas Kehler, Scott Page, Alex 'Sandy' Pentland, Martin Reeves, and John Seely Brown brings this vision into the generative AI era—introducing the concept of Generative Collective Intelligence (GCI). 👉 Instead of framing AI as a substitute for human cognition, GCI treats AI as a "cultural and social technology that allows humans to take advantage of the information other humans have accumulated." This represents a shift from personal productivity tools to collective reasoning infrastructures—where humans and AI collaborate to align on goals, explore alternative solutions, and overcome communication barriers. 🧭 As the authors put it: “The greatest potential of AI lies not in its capacity to act alone but in collaborations that combine human creativity and wisdom with AI's computational and organizational capabilities.” 👉 The paper offers mathematical foundations (comparative judgment, minimum regret), rich use cases (climate adaptation, healthcare, civic participation), and a vision where AI becomes a partner in structured deliberation, not just a source of generative outputs. (which Claudia Chwalisz is also examining). 🤔 Of particular interest to me involved their focus on “Amplifying Serendipitous Discovery” - which reminded me of my recent conversations with the great Dirk Helbing who is also looking into how to enable serendipitous encounters to solve societal problems. 🧭 Quote: “Generative collective intelligence can amplify serendipitous discovery—unexpected connections and insights that emerge when diverse perspectives interact in structured ways...Traditional group decision-making often falls victim to communication complexity, as the increased number of participants creates exponentially more communication channels. Humans lack the capacity to determine which of the thousand plus combinations of three people that could be chosen to form a group of twenty offer the most promise for a breakthrough.” 🤔 Another area of interest explored in the paper involves “The Architecture of Epiphany” - which relates much with what we are working on re: the structuring the quest of questions or architecture of Inquiry (see: https://lnkd.in/etDgZSyN) 🧭 Quote: "What distinguishes GCI's approach to breakthrough thinking is its structured facilitation of what cognitive scientists call "conceptual blending"—the process of integrating elements from different mental spaces to create new conceptual structures." 📄 Full paper: https://lnkd.in/e_gMtpST