This came today in today's SingularityWatch email newsletter
http://www.SingularityWatch.com/mail_list.html
"Catalyzing Collective Computation: Bottom Up is Where IT’s @
Myriad daily bottom up advances are occurring, where people figure out how
to use the net to increase our collective intelligence in a measured,
stepwise manner. These emergences of IA (intelligence amplification via
networks and technological infrastructure) are the most important, most
impressive daily path to AI, and the real untold story of human-machine
integration as well, as we all begin to see ourselves as symbiotic neurons
in the emerging global brain. Such events will continue to accelerate in
the first half of the 21st century, and collectively, I call them the “30
(or 40) Year Road to AI.” These advances are self-organizing, unlike the
long litany of failed attempts to code a top-down “master AI” in some lab
staffed with overconfident geniuses and too much free money to burn. The
economically self-sustaining nature of these IA activities is also one of
the better evidences that their emergent complexity is tuned for
integration with the human social substrate. Here are three examples of
incremental advances:
Tacit.com. Want to know how to use simple AI to monitor employee emails (on
an “opt in” basis to get access to the results) and automatically construct
a database of expertise within any organization? Go visit
http://www.tacit.com). A brilliant example of useful IA on the path to true
AI.
Exp.com. Want to see a working expert consultation system (a large variety
of experts) using a micropayments approach (ie, spend $2 to get your O-Chem
question answered, or $5 for some simple tax advice)? And easy rating of
the quality of that advice? Bookmark http://www.exp.com. Talk about a
viral, self-funding, e-Bay-like approach… Systems like these catalyze the
collective power of the GroupMind forming all around us. They don’t need to
IPO. Very impressive.
Ideas.com. Another great bottom up idea, getting companies to understand
the creative and community benefit of sponsoring collective intelligence
contests. (http://www.Ideas.com). Such efforts represent the crude
beginning of effective groupware within the idea creation function of our
society. Now only if Ideas.com could tap into the college students, who are
coming up with these ideas in their dorms every night, and have the
resources to implement only a small fraction of them…
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/22/technology/22IDEA.html"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri May 18 2001 - 08:44:52 PDT