Collective Intelligence

Abstract

Many systems of self-interested agents have an associated performance criterion that rates the dynamic behavior of the overall system. This chapter presents an introduction to the science of such systems. Formally, collectives are defined as any system having the following two characteristics: First, the system must contain one or more agents each of which we view as trying to maximize an associated private utility; second, the system must have an associated world utility function that rates the possible behaviors of that overall system. In practice, collectives are often very large, distributed, and support little, if any, centralized communication and control, although those characteristics are not part of their formal definition. A naturally occurring example of a collective is a human economy. One can identify the agents and their private utilities as the human individuals in the economy and the associated personal rewards they are each trying to maximize. One could then identify the world utility as the time average of the gross domestic product. ("World utility" per se is not a construction internal to a human economy, but rather something defined from the outside.) To achieve high world utility it is necessary to avoid having the agents work at cross-purposes lest phenomena like liquidity traps or the Tragedy of the Commons (TOC) occur, in which agents' individually pursuing their private utilities lowers world utility. The obvious way to avoid such phenomena is by modifying the agents utility functions to be "aligned" with the world utility. This can be done via punitive legislation. A real-world example of an attempt to do this was the creation of antitrust regulations designed to prevent monopolistic practices.