Design Principles For Online Collective Intelligence

Scott Whitescottblanc@gmail.com

A Little Background

● “In the last two decades, we have seen our planet become smaller and "flatter". In the next two, we will see it become smarter.”

– Brandon Riley, Chief Executive, IBM UK

Collective Intelligence

● “shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals” -- Wikipedia

Examples● Flickr● Netflix● Hunch● Github● Quora● Asana● Wikipedia● Freebase● Google Earth● ….

What are the basic building blocks?

● Participating Agents○ can include humans and even machines○ Agents can have different roles

● Knowledge Artifacts○ Anything which can be shared and embodies information

about something● Repository of knowledge

○ Hosts knowledge artifacts○ Can be centralized or distributed

● Collaboration Mechanism○ Defines how artifacts are addressed, created, updated,

searched, & shared

Human/Machine Cooperation

● Humans○ source of knowledge○ interests & passions○ pose problems

● Machines○ memory & recall○ enhance & learn○ suggest & infer

Design Goal

● “The grand challenge is to boost the collective IQ of organizations and of society”

– Douglas Engelbart, 1963

Collective IQ

● Ranking● Recommendations● Organizing● Prediction● Inference● …

CI Design Principles

● Techniques for maximizing collective IQ○ Requires way of directly/indirectly measuring

the collective IQ of the system● Used to evaluate competing design

alternatives

Openness

● Membership○ Who is allowed to join?○ What credentials are required?

● Member Privileges○ Who can Read/Write/Modify what?

● Design Tradeoffs○ Maximize Participation vs Ensure Privacy

Communication -> Communities● How do agents interact with other

agents?○ Anyone to anyone (Email, etc.)○ Friends (Facebook, MySpace, IM, …)○ Followers (RSS, Twitter, …)○ Groups (Usenet, Google Groups, …)

Knowledge Synthesis

● How is knowledge created?○ Message Exchange (Email, IRC, Yahoo Answers …)○ Potluck (YouTube, Flickr, …)○ Online collaboration (Wikipedia, Google Docs, …)○ Referrals (WWW, Yelp, LinkedIn, …)○ Enrichment (PageRank, Netflix, …)

Searchability

● How are things found?○ By address (Email, WWW, …)○ By person (Facebook, MySpace, …)○ By document Name (Wikipedia, …)○ By keyword/Tag (Google, Del.icio.us, …)

Strong Learnability

Fostering Evolution

● How do we encourage evolution of Collective IQ?

○ Create network effects○ Flexibility to tinker ○ Decoupling of services○ Open platforms○ Power tools○ Make it fun!

● Example: Evolution of ‘retweet’ in Twitter

How Does Nature Do It?

Exercise

● How would you compare the following sites using these principles?

○ Twitter vs IRC○ Facebook vs IM○ Wikipedia vs Google Docs

Still In The Early Days

● Primarily still on low end of the stack○ Ranking○ Recommendations○ Sharing

● Need to move up the stack○ Move offline local knowledge of agents online○ Allow for synthesis of new knowledge

■ Move beyond simple documents and images○ Allow amateurs to participate

● Examples ○ Allow amateurs to participate in grand challenge

science problems by divide and conquer○ Allow anyone to participate in creation of Stanford

quality educational programs

Q&A

● Questions?