Collective intelligence serving the world

Dr. Thomas Maillart, a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the GSEM, was recently featured in the University of Geneva’s Campus Magazine for his scientific research on collective intelligence, which he believes to be an ideal tool for addressing complex issues like climate change, poverty, and global governance.

One of his research paths focused on the performance of online groups involved in open-source software production. Because these communities can demonstrate the ability of large and small groups to build extremely complex, high-performance, and resilient software, they are an example of the potential of online collective intelligence. Further beneficial to the deployment of collective intelligence is the fact that each member can be informed of what the others are doing (peer review), and the ability of each participant to exercise his or her own free will as to which tasks he or she does or does not wish to carry out (task self-selection).

His observation of these online groups taught him several lessons that informed his subsequent research, such as demonstrating the limits of Aristotle's famous assertion that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts. In an article, he revealed that bringing people together around a common task does indeed increase productivity and that this can be measured by a mathematical law. At the same time, he showed that the larger the group, the more this acceleration in productivity will be reduced.

Currently, Dr. Maillart explores non-verbal communication to enhance early diagnosis of autistic children through the Sinergia project. Through the project, his goal is to identify different types of non-verbal interaction and to understand to what extent these are likely to generate an environment conducive to interactive and mutual learning.

To read the full interview by Vincent Monnet and Antoine Vos, click here (in French).