General Collective Intelligence and the Constraints to Group Decision-Making

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of how current group decision-making systems, including collective intelligence algorithms, might be constrained in ways that prevent them from achieving general problem solving ability. And as a result of those constraints, how some collective issues that pose existential risks such as poverty, the environmental degradation that has linked to climate change, or other sustainable development goals, might not be reliably solvable with current decision-making systems. This paper then addresses the question that assuming specific categories of such existential problems are not currently solvable with any existing group decision-systems, how can decision-systems increase the general problem solving ability of groups so that such issues can reliably be solved? In particular, how might a General Collective Intelligence, defined here to be a system of group decision-making with general problem solving ability, facilitate this increase in group problem-solving ability? The paper then presents some boundary conditions that a framework for modeling general problem solving in groups suggests must be satisfied by any model of General Collective Intelligence. When generalized to apply to all group decision-making, any such constraints on group intelligence, and any such system of General Collective Intelligence capable of removing those constraints, are then applicable to any process that utilizes group problem solving, from design, to manufacturing or any other life-cycle processes of any product or service, or whether research in any field from the arts to the basic sciences. For this reason these questions are important to a wide variety of academic disciplines. And because many of the issues impacted represent existential risks to human civilization, these questions may also be important by to all by definition.

General Collective Intelligence vs the Innate Collective Intelligence Factor

“…In addition, a number of other adaptive domains defined by the FMF [7], [8] can be applied to that reasoning. One of these is the domain of cooperation.…”

“…Therefore any problem that has been defined or solved at any time in history is by definition within the capacity of individuals or groups to solve without GCI. And by the same token, any problem that has not yet been solved, whether global poverty or other sustainable development goals [8], [9] implementing an AGI [10], universal global access to health care, smart sustainable cities, or even achieving a higher level of convergence in science [1], perhaps as represented by the so-far unattainable goal of a unified field theory, may not be reliably solvable without GCI.…”

Applications for General Collective Intelligence

“…There a wide range of cases in which defining problems in particular ways is impossible for groups without GCI, and why for this reason, regions of the problem space are inaccessible. These reasons might be complexity, lack of alignment with the interests of key decision-makers [4], or other.…”

Bridging the Left - Right Political Divide with Artificial Intelligence and Collective Intelligence

“…In short, GCI is essentially a system for maximizing collective outcomes, but since by design a GCI is required to be a dynamically stable system with respect to available resources, and since any outcome in general might be required to achieve or restore stability, GCI must must also maximize the degree to which it can achieve collective outcomes per unit of resources. According to the model of GCI, without such a system all current decision systems, whether autocratic rule or democratic voting, contain features or bugs that align decision-making with the interests of some subset of individuals rather than with the collective well-being (Williams, 2020a), (Williams, 2020e). This holds both for decision-making on the political left in the US, as well as on the political right, and is especially apparent during times of crisis that draw attention to flaws in decision-making, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic (Williams, 2020g).…”

“…According to this model of collective cognition (GCI), in order to remove the bugs or features in current group decision-making so that truly decentralized collective decision-making is possible, "collective reasoning" must be possible (Williams, 2020e). According to the models of individual cognition and collective cognition described here, where the individual cognitive awareness process navigates individual reasoning in order to maintain cognitive fitness ("well-being") within a stable range, the collective cognitive awareness process navigates collective reasoning in order to maintain collective cognitive well-being within a stable range.…”