Conversational Swarm Intelligence: Amplifying Group Intelligence
Conversational Swarm Intelligence (CSI) is an innovative communication technology that has the potential to revolutionize the way large groups deliberate and make decisions. This pilot study focused on the application of CSI in the context of selecting players for a weekly Fantasy Football contest. The results of the study are extremely promising and suggest that CSI can significantly amplify the intelligence of groups engaged in real-time conversational deliberation.
The concept of CSI is inspired by the dynamics of biological swarms, where large groups of individuals work together to achieve collective goals. In the case of CSI, networked groups consisting of 25 to 2500 people engage in real-time text-chat deliberation using a platform called Thinkscape. This technology combines the benefits of small-group reasoning with the collective intelligence advantages of large-groups.
To compare the effectiveness of CSI with traditional decision-making methods, participants in the pilot study were divided into two groups. The first group completed a survey to record their player selections individually, while the second group used CSI to collaboratively select sets of players. The results were quite remarkable:
- The real-time conversational group using CSI outperformed 66% of survey participants
- The CSI method significantly outperformed the most popular choices from the survey (the Wisdom of Crowd)
These findings indicate that CSI has the potential to enhance decision-making outcomes compared to individual decision-making or relying solely on popular choices obtained through surveys. The amplification of intelligence observed through CSI is a significant step forward in harnessing the collective wisdom of large groups.
This pilot study’s results provide intriguing insights into the possibilities offered by CSI technology. With further research and development, CSI could potentially be applied to a wide range of domains and industries, such as business strategy, policy-making, and problem-solving. The prospect of collective superintelligence, where groups can achieve intelligence levels beyond what any single individual could achieve, is both exciting and promising.