Theoretical Framework for a Future Computational Collective Intelligence

Pierre Levy (01/03/10) em Pierre Levy Posterous

http://pierrelevy.posterous.com/theoretical-framework-for-a-future-computatio

1) Difference between Collective Computational Intelligence and Computational Collective Intelligence To avoid any misunderstanding I would like to begin with a clear distinction between what I mean by Collective Computational Intelligence and Computational Collective Intelligence. a) Collective computational intelligence involves collaboration

between software agents, with a new level of computational intelligence emerging form their collaboration. These technologies involve swarm intelligence, ant colony simulation, web services, grid computing, distributed cloud computing and multi-agent computing in general. b) Computational collective intelligence is a more multidisciplinary field. Its subject is the understanding of human collective intelligence and its augmentation by the means of ubiquitous distributed automatic symbol manipulation. Even if computational collective intelligence involves the use and development of collective computational intelligence, its scope is broader because it is not concerned only by computer engineering but promotes a strong collaboration between computing on the one hand and humanities and social sciences on the other hand. 2) Human Symbolic cognition The main difference between animal cognition and human cognition is that human beings are able to manipulate cultural symbolic systems like languages, musical systems, rituals, legal systems, technologies, etc. Animal cognition is obviously characterized by categorization and memorization of sense data. But animal memory is mainly limited to the individual and its categorization stays implicit. By contrast, in
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human cognition, sense data are explicitly categorized by the use of symbolic systems and symbolic memory can be shared inside communities and between generations. As symbolic systems are created and maintained at the social scale, human collective intelligence involves a distributed and socially coordinated processing of symbols (recording, transformation and transmission). This personal and collective symbolic processing bears three interdependent main fruits: reflexivity, dialogue and narrativity. a) Reflexivity The main source of reflexivity is the syntactic complexity and semantic diversity of human languages. Reflexivity implies: - the ability to create and recreate symbolic maps of the phenomenal world (the sensori-motor experience), - the self-referential ability to map one's own symbolic cognition, - the ability to be aware of one's own ignorance, to question one's own mental models and to ask questions in general. b) Dialogue Dialogue is based on the partaking of symbolic systems - and notably common languages - among human communities. Dialogue includes: - exchange of ideas and narratives, - negotiation about meaning and practical decisions, - common understanding of complex models, - common norms for reasoning and interpretation - representation of the other's cognitive processes. c) Narrativity Narrativity is based on the ability to model complex causal phenomena at the symbolic level. This involves the identification of actors, objects, qualities and processes and the evocation of their complex interaction through the virtual space-time of narratives. Through all its various forms (that are not limited to the traditional tales) narrativity is the main human tool for knowledge organization.
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Based of symbolic manipulation, reflexivity, dialogue and narrativity make the natural human collective intelligence more powerful than the animal collective intelligence. 3) The Digital Medium Information technology augments natural human collective

intelligence by enhancing its ability to record, process and transmit symbols. Information technology gives rise to an artificial human collective intelligence. Artificial human collective intelligence began with the use of writing systems, it grew with the printing press and electronic media, it is now related to an universally distributed digital medium. The main idea behind computational collective intelligence is that the digital medium is integrating all previous media and that it can augment in an unprecedented way human collective intelligence by harnessing the power of ubiquitous digital data storage and automatic manipulation on these data. But as the digital medium is only one or two generations old, we still don't have the cultural symbolic systems that will help us to exploit fully the new availability of automatic symbol manipulation. In particular, we know how to augment numerical calculus and logical reasoning by the way of automatic computation. But what about hyper-reflexivity of computational collective intelligence processes? What about trans-cultural and translinguistic dialogue on shared digital data? What about new kinds of hyper-narrativity harnessing the ubiquitous availability of multimedia data and computational power? We have already a digital medium but still no hypercortex. 4) The IEML Semantic Sphere a) Addressing layers of the digital medium 1) The first layer assigns addresses to bits in the physical storage systems of automatic symbol manipulators. It is the operating systems that take care of this addressing layer. This layer has been set-up in the middle of the XXe century.
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2) The second layer assigns addresses to the automatic symbol manipulators in theglobal digital telecommunication network. It is of course the Internet protocol that takes care of this addressing layer. Even it has been invented at the end of the 1960 decade, the Internet emerged as an universal addressing system only during the years 1980, at the time of the personal computing revolution. 3) The third layer, the WWW, assigns precise universal addresses to Pages (URLs), allowing the hyperlinking from any URL to any other. The WWW has been widely adopted from the middle of the nineties of the last century. A powerful generalization of the WWW is the Web of data. Through the data formats XML, RDF and OWL, the Web of data insures a better interoperability between data addressed by URLs. The Web of data (particularly regarding RDF and OWL) is still in a phase of implementation. 4) I'm pleading here for the adoption of a fourth layer of addressing: the addressing ofconcepts. This new addressing layer would be based on IEML (Information Economy Meta Language), an artificial symbolic system that I have designed and that is theoretically able to express any kind of meaning in a formal computable way. The main difference between the layer of data - addressed by URLs - and the layer of semantic metadata - addressed by IEML USLs (Uniform Semantic Locators) - is that URLs are opaque by design and that USLs are transparent by design. b) Transparency by design All the nodes (USLs) of the IEML semantic sphere are variables of the same semantic group of transformation and the computable circuits between these nodes describe paradigmatic relations (set-subset relations, etymologic relations, several kinds of symmetric relations, serial relations) and syntagmatic relations (relations between the elements of hyper-propositions and hyper-narratives). The IEML semantic sphere presents itself as an immense closed structure of intersecting syntagmatic and paradigmatic pipelines that branch out from nodes (IEML USLs) of which each is a separate
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variable in a system of symmetrical and calculable transformations. One can think of the syntax of IEML as a virtual machine capable of computing the vast network of fractal complexity of the semantic sphere. This syntactic machine needs to be provided with a dictionary. The dictionary establishes a correspondence between IEML and natural languages and sets the details of internal connections of the semantic sphere. Each point, junction or node of the IEML semantic sphere is at the center of a multitude of pathways of calculable transformations. Along these pathways of transformation, each "step" from one intersection to another is the variable of a discrete function. Step by step and from one to the next, these paths connect each point to the entire mass of all the other points. In the centrifugal direction, an intersection point is at the singular origin of a star of transformation that generates the entire sphere. In the centripetal direction, a junction-point functions as a universal vanishing point of the noosphere, since there is a computable path of transformation that leads to it from any other point. c) A model of computational collective intelligence I propose a model of computational collective intelligence in which an online creative conversation actualizes the junction of (a) the symbolic cognition based on the natural cortex and (b) the computational symbolic cognition based on a mechanical hypercortext. The structure of the natural symbolic cognition has already been sketched. The computational symbolic cognition has hopefully the same structure as the natural cognition. The Web of data is the equivalent of the sense data of personal natural cognition. It is of course multimedia. It is also opaque (or implicit) because its addresses are not the variables of a transparent group of transformations. The IEML semantic sphere is the equivalent of the discursive explicit symbolic layer in the natural cognition based on the biological cortex. But as it is based on the digital medium, it has been designed from the beginning to exploit fully its distributed computing power and to augment human reflexivity, dialogue and narrativity at the scale of
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the current online creative conversation. It can be used to describe, map and organize the digital multimedia memory from any semantic perspective or universe of discourse. It is also able to make these different perspectives and universe of discourse automatically interoperable. Moreover, its circuit structure allows for the design of varied information economy games organizing the circulation of symbolic energy. These information economy games will take as their imput the activity of players tagging data and assessing their value. Computational collective intelligence implies the categorization of multimedia data by semantic metadata and the multimedia representation of semantic information economy. My guess is that we would be able to build a hypercortex augmenting decisively our human collective intelligence only if we grow a transparent hypertextual sphere of semantic metadata, the nodes of its graph being the variables of the same group of transformation. Needless to say, the growth of an hypercortex enabled by a semantic sphere of transparent metadata would be a huge cultural and technical international endeavor. IEML is only the proof by a real example that the success of such an endeavor is possible.