The collective Intelligence indicates the cognitive capacities of a Communauté resulting from the multiple interactions between members (or Agents). The elements carried to the Connaissance of the members of the community make that they have only a perception partial of the environment and do not have Conscience totality of the elements which influence the group. Agents with the very simple behavior can thus achieve complex tasks apparently very thanks to a fundamental mechanism called Synergie. Under certain particular conditions, the Synergy created by collaboration made emerge of faculties of Representation, creation and training higher than those of the isolated individuals. The study of the collective intelligence implies also the study of the limits of the interactions between members of a group, limits which lead to collective Erreurs sometimes catastrophic.

The forms of collective intelligence are very diverse according to the types of community and the members whom they join together. The collective systems are indeed more or less sophisticated. The human society in particular does not obey rules as mechanical as of other natural systems, for example of the animal world. For the simplest characteristics are

  • local and limited information : each individual has only one knowledge partial of the environment and is not aware of the totality of the elements which influence the group.
  • a whole of simple rules : each individual obeys a restricted whole of simple rules compared to the behavior of the total system.
  • the interactions are multiple : each individual is in relation to one or more other individuals of the group.
  • the emergent structure is useful for the community : the individuals find a benefit to collaborate (sometimes instinctively) and their performance is better than if they had been only.

Natural collective intelligence

The collective intelligence is observed mainly in the social insects (Fourmi S, Termite S and Abeille S), the animals moving in formation (Migratory birds, benches of Poisson) and, to a lesser extent, the social mammals driving out in pack (wolf S, Hyène S). The common points of these various species are exactly those which characterize the collective intelligence:

  • the individuals like the proximity of their similar and tend to being gregarious because they obtain a substantial advantage to drive out, to move or live in group.

  • They interact in a local way by the means of signals (growl, phéromones, attitudes).
  • the individual alone answers certain stimuli instinctively. The coordination of the group is implicit and is done through very simple behavioral rules at the individual level.

From this point of view, the mammals driving out in pack such as the wolf or the hyena are less representative of a real collective intelligence, because each individual is endowed with an important cognitive capacity (taking into consideration insect or birds in particular) and has rather important total information (within the framework of a hunting for example). This type of intelligence approaches more organization and coordination which one finds in the sports of team or the Groupware. In addition, the number of individuals is not sufficiently high to really speak about a phenomenon of collective intelligence.

The case of the migratory birds

The migratory birds must traverse very long distances, under sometimes difficult conditions. Thus, it is important for them to optimize their displacement in term of energy spent. The wild Oies adopt formations out of V which enable them to extend their distance from flight of almost 70%, because each bird takes the aspiration of its predecessor, as the cyclists do it.

The price to be paid is a loss of speed, since an individual alone steals on average 24% more quickly than a flight.

Ants: a natural model of solution to problem distributed

The Ants, like others social Insects, present characteristics which return the life in very advantageous Collectivité to the Espèce:
  • a behavioral register limited
  • Of the cognitive capacities not developed enough to allow only one individual to obtain enough information on the state of the Community to guarantee an effective division of the tasks, requirement with the good performance of the colony.
  • Of faculties of Communication advanced by the means of the Phéromone S, supporting multiple Interactions

The colony as a whole is a Système complexes self-regulated Stable and able to adapt very easily to the environmental variations most unforeseeable, but more especially to solve problems, without external control or central mechanism of coordination, in manner completely distributed. The tasks achieved by the colony are naturally not with the range of an individual alone or an identical group stripped of collective intelligence.

That made it possible the ants to be essential everywhere on the terrestrial sphere since it is considered that the biomass ants is about identical to that of the mankind.

The division of the tasks

The Ant S, as well as the Bee S or the Wasp S, have faculty to distribute dynamically the tasks according to the needs for the colony and this, in a completely distributed way, without any central control.

In the ants, the most open sign of an effective distribution of the tasks within the colony is the existence of Caste S, which can be of two types: morphological and behavioral.

  • morphological Castes

* the working is relatively small, in order to be able to reach all the galleries of the nest. They are occupied inter alia its construction, of its cleaning, as well as care of the larvae.
* the soldates are more robust and larger, having imposing mandibles in general, and are assigned to the monitoring of the nest.
* the queen is generally the largest ant of the colony and is intended exclusively for the laying.

  • behavioral Castes

There exist very many behaviors within a colony of ants, and although the morphological caste affects strong the behavior, it is considered that there exist indeed behavioral castes :
* Self-sufficiency
* To nourish the queen
* To nourish the larvae
* to deal with the eggs
* To attend the
blossomings * To forage
* To trace tracks phéromonales
* To drive out preys
* To attack enemy colonies
* To defend the colony
* To patrol, keep the entry of the nest
* To consolidate the walls of the nest

An individual can change caste during his life, but it becomes also more and more specialized with the wire of time. Same manner, the youngest individuals tend to remain in the anthill (to nourish the queen, the larvae, to deal with eggs, etc) while oldest venture outside to collect food, to drive out or keep the entry of the nest.

Mechanisms of division of the labor
The division of the tasks in the social insects is completely flexible : the number of individuals belonging to the various castes and the nature of the tasks to be achieved are prone to constant changes lasting the life of the colony. The proportion of individuals devoting itself to a given task varies according to the disturbances internal of the nest and total of the environment. As far as possible, they are the most adapted individuals who adopt a given task, but in extreme cases, even of the individuals of unsuited morphological castes can fill the needs for a task (for example, the workers can start to defend the nest if a lack of soldates is felt).

How the colony controls the proportion of individuals assigned to each task, since no individual has total representation of the needs for the colony? The flexibility of the division of the labor depends on the behavioral flexibility of each individual, of which a plausible biological model is the concept of threshold of answer . According to this model, each individual has a threshold of answer , more or less raised, for each task to be achieved within the colony. These tasks are as much of stimuli for the individuals, than they are visual, phéromonaux or of another nature. When a stimuli exceeds the threshold of answer of an individual, this last is instinctively put to work to reduce this stimuli. If one compared that with the work of a housewife, the stimuli would be the sight of the disorder or the bad smells. When these last exceed a certain threshold, the housewife would devote herself to the arrangement, or cleaning. When the stimuli of the hunger would become too important, it would start to eat.

Moreover, the thresholds of answer are adaptifs: the more one individual devotes himself to a task, the more the associated threshold drops. The individual specializes.

Shorter way

A colony must feed to survive. For that, the ants seek sources of food in the vicinity of the nest. In a first phase, they wander in a more or less random way. When an ant discovers a source of food, it turns over to the nest by depositing Phéromone S along the traversed way. Certain species have faculty to return to the nest very quickly, thanks to a compass intern based on the polarization of the solar Lumière , while others rather seem to be directed memory. In way, the ant which discovered the source of food recruits other individuals thanks to the Phéromone S deposited, but also by carrying out Trophallaxie S which enable them to evaluate the quality of the source in order to choose to follow the track or not. Same manner, an individual crossing a track will decide to follow it with a certain probability p_1.

In their turn, the recruited individuals deposit more phéromones on the followed track, which will make it still gravitational. This positive reinforcement leads the colony to concentrate little by little on this track and with to exploit this source. Nevertheless, each individual can leave the track with a certain probability p_2, then supporting the exploration and the discovery of other sources of food possibly more favorable or, of shorter tracks bringing to the same source.

The colonies of ants have not only the capacity to discover other sources, but also to rock their exploitation on the most favorable source (in term of quality, richness and distance). Indeed, when an ant discovers a new source, it will be able to recruit other individuals who will or not decide to change track according to the quality of the food exchanged by Trophallaxie. Moreover, and more important, the Phéromones evaporate: so a short track being marked more often than a long track, it could be privileged with the wire of time.

The success of the ants holds of perfect balance between the Exploration and the Exploitation, between a negative reaction and positive of the driving system to its balance Dynamique. In this exercise, the variables p_1 and p_2 play a key function: in reality they are characterized by Bruit in the sensors of the ants which can lead them to lose a track, but also by physical considerations: when two individuals cross, one or the other (or sometimes both) must deviate from the track, which can potentially lead it to lose it. At the individual level, this event is negative in what it reduces the effectiveness of the exploitation of a source, but at the total level that can bring an enormous benefit. The parameters being multiple, this benefit can be difficult to quantify: a source can be characterized only by its sugar content and its distance. It may be also that it is more distant than another, but much easier of access, or with the shelter of the predatory ones. It is the fact of the complex systems which to integrate of very many parameters which make them unstable and chaotic then.

Termites and car-assembly

Artificial collective intelligence

The Bio-inspiration led many researchers to borrow the principles put forward at the social Insectes to make of them algorithms and Paradigme S of very effective Ingénierie for the resolution of certain problems. They are often gathered under name “Système multi-agent” (SMA). In the same way the concept of collective intelligence tends to take a notable importance within the very broad framework of the economy of knowledge. It is the case with the development of the communities (see in particular Communauté of practice). In organization, management de/par project since the Sixties is an illustration. Technological developments of known as the " Web 2.0 " or semantic Web allows the development of a collective intelligence on Internet. Tools such as Wiki, the " social bookmarks" , the social engines of research (for example Lycos IQ) support the exchange and the division of information by being based on the mutualisation of work (drafting, search for information, appraise) each and everyone.

Collective intelligence in the human society

The collective intelligence in an human society comes from more complex interactions answering various conditions quoted hereafter

A community of interests

a free membership :
  • an adhesion based on common goals.
  • a mutual confidence enters the members.
a horizontal structure :
  • Of the rules (tacit or explicit) identical for all the members.
  • a dynamic Organization: the distribution of the roles is founded on the voluntariate and the complementarity of competences.
a collective management :
  • Autonomy of the members: each one is responsible for its own action.
  • the strategic decisions are based on the Vote or the consensus.

A collaboratif space

Of the tools of Co-operation :

a Information system

  • a total access and real-time to the Information for the whole of the community.
  • a seen synthetic and contextual of the situation for each member.

a Process of Training

  • a system of regulation: evaluation, control, optimization, correction of the errors.
  • Constitution of a corpus of knowledge: filing, indexing of information.
  • Division of experiments and practices, emergence of a common conscience.

Limits of the collective intelligence in the human society

Many cases of failures are known in this field. For example,

  • the decisions of group, where the members do not dare to say what they think,
  • the passive acceptance of an irrefutable fact whose individual suspects that it leads to a catastrophe (ex: rocket Challenger),
  • discussions on the choices and consequences of the often confused decisions and leading to nothing;
  • the opinion of the experts without consequence vis-a-vis the opinion of a group whose individuals are mistaken,
  • the democratic votes which carry a dictator to the report heading;
  • the collective representations which normalize the behaviors with the detriments of a class or another (leading for example to a very high suicide rate among women in China)

The collective intelligence is thus limited by effects of group (conformism, fear, closing, absence of procedure, ideological homogeneity), so much so that the individual alone can perfectly be more intelligent than a whole group because preserving better its critical thought than under the influence of this one.

To note in addition that the concept of intelligence applies to cognitive faculties, even emotional, of an individual. The application of this concept to a group cannot have the same direction, because it is impossible to say where would emerge from faculties of representation, creation and training higher than those of the isolated individuals.

According to Christian Morel, it is thus, in general, impossible with a group to write a " clear information memorandum and pertinent" (in " Does one make better decisions with several? " , Social sciences , March 2006), which would express the fact that the concept of collective representation is vague, or soft.

However, criticisms above apply more to the groupware of the human type than with the collective intelligence of type ant (distributed Intelligence). Each human has its opinion. The ants do not seem to have of opinion, nor even of personal interest different from the interest of the group.

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