An Evolutionary View of Collective Intelligence

Based on the question “How can people and computers be connected so that – collectively – they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?” we propose an evolutionary approach. From this point of view, there are of course fundamental differences between man and machine. Where one is artificial, the other is natural, and where the computer needs to process, the brain must adapt. We propose the use of culturally inherited units, i.e., memes, for describing collective knowledge storage. Like the genes, memes have the ability to be inherited to the next generation. Genes appear independently of our society while memes are a result of our cultural development. The concept of collective intelligence may involve a new kind of meme, entirely emerging within the intersection between man and machine, i.e., outside the scope of human control. The challenge is to model this behavior without overriding constraints within basic evolutionary vs. machine settings.