[Bmi] Discussion on group intelligence

[Juyang Weng]

Dear colleagues,

I guess that many of you are now close to the end of the final exam week.
It appears that it is time for us to continue to consider the academic
scope that the BMI could get involved in. In the last several exchanges of
emails, we discussed very interesting issues for a single brain-mind.

Now, I respectfully raise to you the multiple brain-minds issue ---
group intelligence.

In the BMI MSU Steering Committee, you can notice that we have some
respected experts in laws, economy, psychology, and artificial intelligence
(AI).  I do not mean that these disciplines are sufficient for such a 
complex issue.
All I intend to say is that we do have people who are experts in group
intelligence.  Please feel free to forward this email to your colleagues
who are interested in group intelligence, natural or artificial.

I do not want to conceal any possible disagreements against raising this
issue.  Some of my colleagues argued that this subject is not our expertise
and a discussion on this broader issue will make us be ridiculed.
I understand that such views are well intended.  But, let us be ridiculed,
as long as within us there are a few who are interested in such issues and
are not afraid of being ridiculed.  I have been ridiculed many times in 
the last
10 years by our respected proposal review panels and paper reviewers.

The following is a relatively new example. My only paper submitted
to ICDL 2011 got the lowest review score possible: All 3 respected reviewers
judged that my paper belongs to "definitely reject" category, the lowest
category possible.  Consequently, I did not have any paper in ICDL 2011.
My ICDL 2011 paper submission was a conference version of the paper
"Symbolic Models and Emergent Models: A review" accepted by
IEEE TAMD after many rounds of reviews by the time of submission:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=5872008&tag=1

I bet that many people on this mailing list are against the views expressed
in my paper.  How can the brain's internal representation be emergent,
without any module corresponding to an extra-body concept and without
any boundaries of extra-body concept?

Some of you asked about the basic principles based on which the
brain-mind works.  We hope that such principles can be useful for us to
envision the scientific principles for developing group intelligence,
including a company, a country and this troubled world. It is unlikely
that group intelligence should work exactly like the biological brain-mind.
However, they seem to face the same set of problems.

Some similarities between a brain and a brain group:

A brain:  Each cell does not have the brain intelligence.  Each cell in
the brain is autonomous while it interacts with its environment (other
cells in its environment and the physical world).  The brain needs to
organize rich information from many receptors and many effectors which
interact with the brain's external environment (outside the skull)
and the internal environment (within the skull).   The collection of cells
must learn important events quickly and effectively
so that the group of neurons responds intelligently.

A brain group:  Each human does not have the group intelligence.  Each
human in the group is autonomous while he interacts with its brain's
external environment (other humans in his environment and the physical
world). The brain group needs to organize information from
the "sensors" and "effectors" of the group which interact with the group's
external environment (outside the group) and the internal environment
(within the group).   The collection of brains must learn important
events quickly and effectively so that the group of brains
responds intelligently.

Some differences between a brain and a brain group:

The basic unit of a brain is a cell whose operation is governed by
biology (also chemistry, physics and mathematics).  The basic unit of a 
brain
group is a human, whose brain is governed by the brain science.  However,
a cell is not as sophisticated as a human brain.  A brain displays the 
"group
intelligence" of many cells.

What does the brain science tell us?

 From my latest understanding, the brain
does not seems to have a central controller.   Interactions between 
biological cells are
regulated by the same genome in the nucleus of each cell.   Each cell can be
removed from the brain leaving the brain working almost as well.

What does AI tell us?

In AI, if the human designer is the central controller in
designing the representation of an AI system, this system is highly 
brittle and cannot
deal with new tasks even if it can learn.   We have recently developed a
brain-mind model DN, which is fundamentally different from the conventional
wisdom of AI but can also abstract.

What does the US constitution tell us?

Unlike what our politician superficially put, "human rights", "value", 
"freedom",
and "dignity", the US constitution is an example of group intelligence:
checks and balances of power.  Separation of church and state is an
example --- not letting a static ideology control the operation of US.
Looking at China, it still lets a static ideology "socialism" control the
operation of China, but the true story is that "a few powerful people" 
use the
name "socialism" to control the entire China.

What does the US anti-trust law tell us?  It is harmful for a group of
brains in a powerful company to control the entire sector of the economy.

What does the group psychology tell us?  Some of us only hopes a "wise" 
leader
(well, simple), but others are trying to refine the existing systems to
make different people to communicate better and collaborate better (well,
complex).

If you like, please provide information about your position and your 
work on these
issues by simply reply to this bmi mailing list.   Please reply to all 
so that the
entire mailing list can learn from your information.

Best regards,

-John

-- 
--
Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
3115 Engineering Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Tel: 517-353-4388
Fax: 517-432-1061
Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
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