The Power of Crowds and "Human Computation"

An anonymous reader writes with this Vice article about the power of crowds when it comes to solving complex problems. "Forget artificial intelligence: The key to solving the world's most complex problems could be human-machine collaboration. That's the rallying cry of researchers who penned an editorial in the journal Science championing "human computation"—systems that combine the talents of computers and humans. The authors claim these systems could ultimately tackle issues such as climate change and geopolitical conflict, all without the existential risks posed by true AI and the technological singularity.

Authors Pietro Michelucci and Janis Dickinson imagine a system that would provide a technical framework for ideas to be shared, analyzed, and revised until the best bubble to the top; Michelucci envisages it as a 'dynamic Wikipedia.' The idea would be to develop our understanding of real-world issues online, and test potential solutions in this computational space, then applying new knowledge back in the real world so as to actually effect some change. 'Imagine something like the game SimCity, but a thousand times more detailed, and then link in real-time sensors attached to the internet,' said Michelucci. 'The more faithful that model of the real world becomes, the more accurate it would be for testing out solutions and predicting outcomes.'"

Fariy ports

[Hognoxious]

Airy fairy wishy-washy nonsense.

Re:

[bondsbw]

Except for the involuntary "resistance is futile" thing or the part where you can't think as an individual any more.

Already done!

[Anonymous Coward]

I started reading articles a few years ago about how Eve Online can be data-mined to study economic theories. It's an enormous world, millions of participants, with a completely open, organic, dynamic market economy. And you can experiment with it in ways that would be impractical or unethical in the real world.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/virtual-world-economists-on-real-economies/

Interesting.

SimCity2000

[darkain]

I played the shit out of SimCity 2000. That right there is the perfect utopia world. In that place, I solved the entire world's energy crisis. Just place a waterfall on every single hill in the world, then turn every single waterfall into a hydroelectric power plant! PROBLEM SOLVED!

We have TONS of hills in the real world. All we need to do now is to take the water tool, click on those hills, then add the hydro plants on top. BAM. UNLIMITED ENERGY!

Re:

[BarbaraHudson]

Your solution is sub-optimal. A perfectly flat world, with strips of water pre-allocated when you're in design mode and water pumps placed between the strips, will give you enough water for everyone. As the world expands, go from coal (bunch the plants in one unused corner) to nuclear to fusion. Skip oil, gas, and solar. The first are too expensive per unit of power, and the third covers too much space.

This will allow you cover the whole world, and eventually place arcologies like crazy. After a few of the

Re:

[phantomfive]

With proper pre-planning, you should be able to do this in one marathon 24-hour session

Woah, does it really take that long?

Re:

[BarbaraHudson]

Try it. It takes a LOT of play just to suss out the underlying mechanisms. And experimenting with different layout. And graph paper.

Re:

[excelsior_gr]

For the record, hydroelectric plants come at the bottom of the hills, not on top.

Manhattan Project

[jtara]

Just imagine, if they'd had this for The Manhattan Project.

Oh, wait...

well, ISIS is on board with that

[turkeydance]

real world outcomes

How much will you pay people?

[phantomfive]

Unless it's fun, people aren't going to do your work for free.

Re:

[SuricouRaven]

Not a problem - once the robots put everyone out of work, volunteer time will be plentiful as people just try to find something to do with themselves.

Thanks, Captain Obvious

[penguinoid]

The key to solving the world's most complex problems could be human-machine collaboration.

Oh, you mean that the key to solving the world's most complex problems could be the exact same way complex problems are currently being tackled?

without the existential risks posed by true AI and the technological singularity.

No, you can still have the technological singularity caused by cyborgs, pure computers, pure biology. Certainly, having humans in control of the objectives at every step of the process eliminates some of the worst scenarios, but then again humans aren't particularly trustworthy either.

Singularity

[Livius]

Very clever of Skynet to call it "human-machine collaboration". It will take the humans that much longer to catch on than if they went with the more accurate "machine-human collaboration".

None of us is as dumb as all of us

[thinkwaitfast]

Despair [despair.com]

before 1948 a computer was a human clerk

[peter303]

Before electronic computers, the word computer meant a clerk who calculated stuff like business accounts, insurance tables, ballistic paths, mathematical tables, etc. They wee first males, but during WWI and WWII females predominated as computers. When electronic computers started in the 1940s, the adjective electronic prefaced computer to show it was a machine and better than people. Then after a decade or so the word computer solely meant the machine.

Some of the earliest computer programmers when wome

Citizen Deliberative Councils

[Rademir]

This would be a great thing to combine with Citizen Deliberative Councils [co-intelligence.org]

Re:

[mark-t]

Why the goddamn fuck does practically every goddamn fucking slashdot story lately have to have some goddam fucking lengthty discussion started by some A.C that insisting on spouting some goddamn fucking political non-sequitor into every goddamn single fucking discussion that starts out having absolutely nothing to do with *ANY* political agenda? And why are none these posts and followups not modded as OT? Heck, I expect that *THIS* post will be modded OT.

Posts like what follows from the parent of this

Re:

[mark-t]

Why do you want to?

Because it I have found that it is often the case that A.C.s can make insightful or interesting posts as well, and I do not generally want to exclude them, particularly if I have mod points. Although lengthy discussions like what was spawned by the parent of my earlier post are doing a damn good job of convincing me to not be bothered.

Re:

[KGIII]

I read at -1 and see them. They were a bit annoying at first but I mostly laugh at 'em now. No, really, I've actually laughed more than once. Well, snickered. I'm easily amused but this is what you get when you let everybody and anybody have a voice. It's awesome and retarded, all at the same time.