Talk & discussion about the evolution of information processing, collective intelligence, and hybrid human-machine systems that may save the world or find a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Café Scientifique organized by the Human Computation Institute & Baltijos Pažangiųjų Technologijų Institutas, at Caffeine LT, Vilnius, Lithuania.

1. Life, the Universe, and Information
Processing
Pietro Michelucci, PhD
Director
Eglė Marija Ramanauskaitė
Citizen Science Coordinator
Café Scientifique
September 18, 2017

2. Pietro Michelucci
Overview
• A brief history of information processing
• Humans in the loop
• Convergence
PAST
PRESENT
FUTURE

3. A brief history of
Information Processing

4. BIG BANG
14 b.y.a
Time

5. Time
BIG BANG
14 b.y.a
EARTH
4.5 b.y.a.

6. Time
BIG BANG
14 b.y.a.
LIFE
3 b.y.a.
EARTH
4.5 b.y.a.
LIFE = INFORMATION PROCESSING

7. Reproduction

8. Taxis

9. Phototaxis

10. Decisional Process

12. Why?

13. What are the adaptive benefits of
increasingly sophisticated
information processing
capabilities?

14. What is Information?
• To be informative, it must be unexpected
• Expectations generated by predictions
• Predictions require a model

16. Information processors

17. Human Computation

18. Time
BIG BANG
14 b.y.a.
LIFE
3 b.y.a.
EARTH
4.5 b.y.a.
HUMAN
recently

19. Human Brain
• Most complex information processor
• 100 billion neurons
• A quadrillion synapses

20. Technology + Collective Action =

22. Superintelligent Machine?
Just upload and let Moore’s Law do the rest.

23. What if we leveraged human cognition
directly in a distributed network of humans
and machines?

24. Pietro Michelucci
Playing to strengths

25. Pietro Michelucci
Counting
Precision
Objectivity
Calculation
Persistent Storage
Data Integrity
Process Execution
Machines
25

26. Pietro Michelucci
Counting
Precision
Objectivity
Calculation
Persistent Storage
Data Integrity
Process Execution
Inference
Visual Perception
Linguistic Ability
Abstraction
World Knowledge
Sociocultural Awareness
Creativity
Machines Humans
26

27. Pietro Michelucci
Inference
Visual Perception
Linguistic Ability
Abstraction
World Knowledge
Sociocultural Awareness
Creativity
Counting
Precision
Objectivity
Calculation
Persistent Storage
Data Integrity
Process Execution
Machines Humans
27

28. Pietro Michelucci
Inference
Visual Perception
Linguistic Ability
Abstraction
World Knowledge
Sociocultural Awareness
Creativity
Counting
Precision
Objectivity
Calculation
Persistent Storage
Data Integrity
Process Execution
Inference
Visual Perception
Linguistic Ability
Abstraction
World Knowledge
Sociocultural Awareness
Creativity
Machines
Humans
AITimeline
28
Human labor
categories will
increasingly
narrow to include
only those abilities
that distinguish us
from machines.

29. Emergent

30. Example: query-based
syndromic surveillance

31. Engineered

32. Crowdsourced Microtasks

33. quid-pro-quo

34. Citizen Science

35. The Stardust Mission (NASA)

37. How do we locate a few micron-scale dust particles
embedded somewhere in this aerogel?

39. Distributed Computing Distributed Thinking

40. Andrew Westphal, David Anderson (U.C. Berkeley)
stardust@home August 1, 2006

41. TRADITIONAL LAB
ANALYSIS
DECADES

42. Crowdsourcing
DATA
CROWDSOURCING
A FEW YEARS

43. Solu%on: Stall Catchers

44. Pietro Michelucci
fold.it
44

46. Pietro Michelucci
Public-driven Discovery:
Green Pea Galaxies

47. Pietro Michelucci
Phylo
Jérôme Waldispühl – McGill University

48. Virtuous Ecosystem
patientslikeme.com

49. Problem solving at
unprecedented scales
10 people 1,000,000 people

50. Collective Intelligence
IQ=114IQ=134
IQ=130IQ=121
IQ=98IQ=100
IQ=95IQ=105
Group IQ=105 Group IQ=118
TEAM A TEAM B

51. Challenges
$50K
$1M
{
{

52. Massively Distributed
Problem Solving
Current
State
Goal
State
?
EXPLORE THE SOLUTION SPACE

53. Massively Distributed
Problem Solving
Current
State
Goal
State
Intermediate
State
Intermediate
State

54. Massively Distributed
Problem Solving
Current
State
Goal
State
Intermediate
State
Intermediate
State
Crowdsource:
problem abstraction, idea vetting, solution fusion

55. The Scientific Enterprise
H1 Methods Experiment Data Analysis Results
Methods Data (replication)
H2
H3
Analysis Results
H4

56. Could we engineer
superhuman intelligence?
Cognitive ArchitectureDistributed

58. Psychopathology of
Collective Intelligence
• Psychopathology = information processing dysfunction
• Known forms: neurosis, psychosis
• Unknown forms
• Treatments?
• (See M. Blumberg and P. Michelucci, “The Psychopathology of
Information Processing Systems,” in Handbook of Human
Computation, P. Michelucci, Ed. Springer New York, 2013, pp. 51–59.)

59. Pietro Michelucci
Distributed Sensing
•Collective Sensing
•People as Sensors
•Participatory Sensing

60. Collective Sensing
Aggregate Human Behavioral Data - “Global Pulse”

61. People as Sensors
Subjective Observations

62. Participatory Sensing
Geo-referenced Objective Data
(Machine Sensors with HumanVehicles)

63. Distributed Sensing
Subjective Objective
Individual
People as
Sensors
Participatory
Sensing
Aggregate Collective Sensing

64. Coordinated Action
Local coordination = emergent global behavior

65. Organismic Computing
• Shared Sensing
• Collective Reasoning
• Coordinated Action

67. Group Size

68. Simulated Augmented Reality

69. 3 x 3 Factorial Design
Small Medium Large
Radio
Social
Organismic

70. Hypothesis: Augmentation increases with group size

72. Convergence

73. Interconnectedness
across space across time?
Organismic Computing
Cumulative Culture

74. Coevolution

75. 9+7=16
2349413288
+2473928393
Coupled Cognitive System
Technology

78. “ ”
“I must flee!”
“firing…not firing…firing…”
“she loves me…she loves
me not…”

79. Time
BIG BANG
14 b.y.a.
LIFE
3 b.y.a.
EARTH
4.5 b.y.a.
HUMAN
recently
?
soon

80. Time
BIG BANG
14 b.y.a.
LIFE
3 b.y.a.
EARTH
4.5 b.y.a.
HUMAN
recently

81. tinyurl.com/hcconv
Michelucci, P. (2016). Human Computation and
Convergence. In W. S. Bainbridge & M. C. Roco
(Eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology
Convergence (pp. 455–474). Springer International
Publishing.
Thank you!