Think your friend looks fat in that dress but don’t want to tell her? It’s unlikely she’ll know you’re faking that supportive smile. After all, humans are notoriously bad at detecting insincerity. But ask 100 people to interpret that look on your face and the jury will probably come back with a swift verdict: You’re lying. That’s due to swarm intelligence, the concept that more minds are greater than one (thus the ask-the-audience segment of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire).

As Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others sound the alarm over fears that artificial intelligence will eventually subjugate humans, other scientists and entrepreneurs are developing ways to harness swarm intelligence to reap the benefits while keeping people in the equation, along with their creativity, intuition, judgment and morality. In turn, an increasing number of companies, in fields ranging from marketing and medicine to the military and beyond, are tapping into the products and services being offered by swarm-intelligence startups in the U.S., Italy, Singapore and elsewhere.

A SWARM LETS YOU BUILD AN ARTIFICIAL SUPER EXPERT THAT OUTPERFORMS A TYPICAL HUMAN EXPERT.
DR. LOUIS ROSENBERG, CEO, UNANIMOUS A.I.
One such outfit is Unanimous A.I., a Silicon Valley–based company that meshes human swarms with complex algorithms. In a recent study, one of its swarms collectively made 46 percent fewer errors when identifying fake smiles than individual participants. “Humans are not very accurate at telling if someone is being honest or deceptive,” says CEO Dr. Louis Rosenberg, who finds swarm intelligence not only a better predictor of truth but also an effective way of solving problems. He references nature’s swarms, such as birds, bees and fish. When it comes to food, shelter and survival, they outperform individuals and collectively make decisions for the greater good. “If a swarm acted like Congress, it would die,” he says, emphasizing that survival depends on cohesion.

On Rosenberg’s social platform, UNU, human clusters ranging in size from five to 75 members answer a variety of questions. Operating remotely, participants drag magnetized markers to possible answers arranged around a hexagon. The cluster has 60 seconds to provide a group answer. More than 150,000 people are registered on the platform, and the results speak for themselves: Average joes make better Oscar predictions than film critics, and a TechRepublic reporter who made a $1 Kentucky Derby bet based on UNU’s group think ended up pocketing $542 in winnings. “A swarm treats people as a data processor,” Rosenberg says. “A swarm lets you build an artificial super expert that outperforms a typical human expert.”

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.ozy.com