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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
New communication and computing technologies are enabling people to come together to achieve higher quality of life and to develop innovative products and services. The down-to-earth problem of building these informational systems, however, is entangled with theoretical questions of what is possible and what is impossible when bringing together ubiquitous informational technologies with the people and organizations they are transforming. Group decisionmaking, information factories, and crowdsourcing are all ways of structuring systems to draw on the strengths of many, allowing collective intelligence rather than cacophony to emerge.
In this talk, I will discuss a mathematical model of human decision-making and show the benefits of diversity in groups. Next I will present a model of crowdsourcing with strategic players, and further show empirical evidence from a large-scale system we built that indicates the importance of drawing human attention. A thermodynamic interpretation leads us to ask: is there a Carnot limit for knowledge work? In closing, I discuss how fundamental limits on the transmission of information provide insight into systems with humans and machines.
Host: Josephine Olivas