Journal of Multiscale Neuroscience

Abstract

Collective intelligence, broadly conceived, refers to the adaptive behavior achieved by groups through the interactions of their members, often involving phenomena such as consensus building, cooperation, and competition. The standard view of collective intelligence is that it is a distinct phenomenon from supposed individual intelligence. In this position piece, we argue that a more parsimonious stance is to consider all intelligent adaptive behavior as being driven by similar abstract principles of collective dynamics. To illustrate this point, we highlight how similar principles are at work in the intelligent behavior of groups of non-human animals, multicellular organisms, brains, small groups of humans, cultures, and even evolution itself. If intelligent behavior in all of these systems is best understood as the emergent result of collective interactions, we ask what is left to be called “individual intelligence”? We believe that viewing all intelligence as collective intelligence offers greater explanatory power and generality, and may promote fruitful cross-disciplinary exchange in the study of intelligent adaptive behavior.

Individuality and the collective in AI agents: Explorations of shared consciousness and digital homunculi in the metaverse for cultural heritage

“…As well, such an amalgamation has led scholars and technologists to contemplate the creation of digital homunculi, or changelings: virtual entities endowed with distinct consciousness, yet embedded within a collective cognitive fabric [10] . Such entities challenge pre-existing conceptions of individuality, consciousness, and the very essence of self-awareness [11] .…”

On multiscale analyses of neural processing, motor movement, and cognition

“…Many of these papers point to statistical signatures of self-organized emergence in the multiscale time series of cognition, perception and action. But nowhere is that self-organization more apparent than in the capstone article of this special issue, by Falandays et al (2023). They document a dizzying array of collective processes that generate minimally-cognitive, moderately-cognitive and maximally-cognitive behaviors in multicellular organisms, colonies insects, schools of fish, flocks of birds, human brains, groups of humans, and entire human societies.…”