University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
Superminds
Book

Superminds

The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together

Thomas W. Malone
Little, Brown US, 2018
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Eye Opening
  • Visionary
  • Hot Topic

Recommendation

Can people harness the power of collective intelligence to solve the world’s most intractable problems? What does the “global mind” look like? Will AI take away jobs? Thomas W. Malone, founder of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, provides a fascinating portrait of a future in which the collaboration of human and artificial intelligence will transform society’s “hierarchies, democracies, markets, communities and ecosystems.” Offering scope and insight in engaging, accessible language, Malone imagines a global mind encompassing all other “superminds” and articulates humanity’s deepest connections.

Summary

Individuals collaborating intelligently to achieve goals comprise a “supermind.”

Founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence Thomas W. Malone describes a supermind as “a group of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelligent.” To “seem intelligent,” a supermind’s activities must have identifiable goals.

Two kinds of intelligence exist. Specialized intelligence achieves specific goals effectively in a given environment. General intelligence can achieve a range of goals in various environments and has the capacity to learn and adapt. Humans possess general intelligence, and computers perform only specialized tasks. Computers and humans together can achieve remarkable things.

A standardized test to evaluate collective intelligence found the groups that scored the highest possessed elevated social perception, equal participation and a larger proportion of women. Another factor was the group’s “cognitive diversity” – when it comprises “verbalizers, object visualizers, and spatial visualizers.” The more collectively intelligent the group, the faster it learns. Having a ...

About the Author

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He also wrote The Future of Work.

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