Collective intelligence is a superset of the term artificial intelligence, since collective intelligence can be created by a combination of human intelligence, artificial intelligence or both. The most valuable intelligent systems are a combination of that—that’s why the data troves of Google and Facebook, along with others, are so valuable. They have a host of trained machine learning models running constantly in addition to billions of clicks and actions being registered by all of their users.
- Anand Sampat, Co-Founder & CEO @ Datmo, ML geek
In human history, there is an increase in collective intelligence based on media that increase our ability to manipulate symbols. Currently, we are at the state of algorithmic symbol manipulation, but it’s just the beginning of this new era.
- Pierre Levy, Philosopher on why Elon Musk is Wrong About AIHumans excel at embedding individual intelligence in shareable constructs. Our early knowledge sharing relied on speech and other social behaviors, but over time we augmented this capacity for collective intelligence with writing, publishing and other technologies. This silent transformation - this long-term shift from the social to the technological - has led to a world where machines now play an increasingly dominant role as our containers of collective intelligence. Today’s explosive growth in machine learning marks a turning point as we now prioritize the teaching of machines over the teaching of humans. As this happens, knowledge becomes increasingly abstracted from individual human minds and machines transition from mere containers of our collective intelligence to agents capable of using that information on our behalf. This transformation changes humanity’s relationship to knowledge and raises profound implications for the future of the human experience.
