Human society faces increasingly complex problems that require coordinated collective action. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds the potential to bring together the knowledge and associated action needed to find solutions at scale. In order to unleash the potential of human and AI systems, we need to understand the core functions of collective intelligence. To this end, we describe a socio-cognitive architecture that conceptualizes how boundedly rational individuals coordinate their cognitive resources and diverse goals to accomplish joint action. Our transactive systems framework articulates the inter-member processes underlying the emergence of collective memory, attention, and reasoning, which are fundamental to intelligence in any system. Much like the cognitive architectures that have guided the development of artificial intelligence, our transactive systems framework holds the potential to be formalized in computational terms to deepen our understanding of collective intelligence and pinpoint roles that AI can play in enhancing it.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BacharachM. (1999). Interactive team reasoning: A contribution to the theory of co-operation. Research in Economics, 53(2), 117–147. https://doi.org/10.1006/reec.1999.0188
2.
CarsrudA.BrannbackM.ElfvingJ.BrandtK. (2009). Motivations: The Entrepreneurial Mind and Behavior. In CarsrudA. L.BrannbackM. (Eds.), Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind: Opening the Black Box (pp. 141–165). Springer.
3.
FioreS. M.WiltshireT. J. (2016). Technology as Teammate: Examining the Role of External Cognition in Support of Team Cognitive Processes. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01531
GimpelH.Graf-DraschV.LaubacherR. J.WohlM. (2020). Facilitating like Darwin: Supporting cross-fertilisation in crowdsourcing. Decision Support Systems, 132, 113282.
6.
GliksonE.WoolleyA. W. (2020). Human Trust in Artificial Intelligence: Review of Empirical Research. Academy of Management Annals, 14(2), 627–660.
7.
GuptaP.KimY. J.GliksonE.WoolleyA. W. (2019). Digitally nudging team processes to enhance collective intelligence. Proceedings of Collective Intelligence 2019.
8.
GuptaP.WoolleyA. W. (2018). Productivity in an era of multi-teaming: The role of information dashboards and shared cognition in team performance. Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2018.
9.
HackmanJ. R.OldhamG. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 16(2), 250–279.
10.
HackmanJ. R.WagemanR. (2005). A Theory of Team Coaching. Academy of Management Review, 30(2), 269–287.
11.
KaboF. (2018). The architecture of network collective intelligence: Correlations between social network structure, spatial layout and prestige outcomes in an office. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1753), 20170238.
12.
KitturA.LeeB.KrautR. E. (2009). Coordination in collective intelligence: the role of team structure and task interdependence. Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1495–1504.
13.
KnottA. M. (2008). R&D/Returns causality: Absorptive capacity or organizational IQ. Management Science, 54(12), 2054.
14.
LeggS.HutterM. (2007). A collection of definitions of intelligence. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, 157, 17–24.
15.
LockeE. A.LathamG. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting & task performance. Prentice-Hall.
16.
LuriaA. R. (1973). The working brain: An introduction to neuropsychology. Basic Books.
17.
MaloneT. W.BernsteinM. S. (2015). Handbook of collective intelligence (MaloneT. W.BernsteinM. S., Eds.). MIT Press.
18.
MaloneT. W.NickersonJ. V.LaubacherR. J.FisherL. H.De BoerP.HanY.TowneW. B. (2017). Putting the pieces back together again: Contest webs for large-scale problem solving. Proceedings of ACM CSCW2017, 1661–1674.
19.
MarksM. A.DechurchL. A.MathieuJ. E.PanzerF. J.AlonsoA. (2005). Teamwork in multiteam systems. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90, 964–971.
20.
MathieuJ. E.GallagherP. T.DomingoM. A.KlockE. A. (2019). Embracing Complexity: Reviewing the Past Decade of Team Effectiveness Research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6(1), 17–46.
21.
MayoA. T.WoolleyA. W. (2021). Variance in group ability to transform resources into performance, and the role of coordinated attention. Academy of Management Discoveries.
22.
McNeeseN.DemirM.ChiouE.CookeN. (2021). Trust and Team Performance in Human-Autonomy Teaming. International Journal of Electronic Commerce.
23.
National Research Council. (2015). Enhancing the effectiveness of team science (Committee on the Science of Team Science, N. J. Cooke, & M. L. Hilton, Eds.). National Academies Press.
24.
PescetelliN.RutherfordA.RahwanI. (2021). Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online. Nature Communications, 12(1), 3195. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1
25.
RenY.ArgoteL. (2011). Transactive memory systems 1985-2010: An integrative framework of key dimensions, antecedents, and consequences. The Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 189–229.
26.
RetelnyD.RobaszkiewiczS.ToA.LaseckiW. S.PatelJ.RahmatiN.DoshiT.ValentineM.BernsteinM. S. (2014). Expert crowdsourcing with flash teams. Proceedings of ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 75–85.
27.
RiedlC.KimY. J.GuptaP.MaloneT. W.WoolleyA. W. (2021). Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(21). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2005737118
28.
RiedlC.WoolleyA. W. (2017). Teams vs. crowds: A field test of the relative contribution of incentives, member ability, and emergent collaboration to crowd-based problem solving performance. Academy of Management Discoveries, 3(4), 382–403.
29.
ScottW. R.DavisG. F.ScottW. R. (2007). Organizations and organizing: rational, natural, and open system perspectives (1st ed). Pearson Prentice Hall.
30.
SimonH. A. (1957). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organizations (2nd ed.). Macmillan.
31.
Van KleefG. A.HomanA. C.CheshinA. (2012). Emotional influence at work: Take it EASI. Organizational Psychology Review, 2(4), 311–339.
32.
WoolleyA. W.ChabrisC. F.PentlandA.HashmiN.MaloneT. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(6004), 686–688. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1193147
