Superminds

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 ...