Title: Defining a continuum from individual, to swarm, to collective intelligence, and to general collective intelligence

Authors: Andy E. Williams

Addresses: Nobeah Foundation, Riara Rd., Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract: The concept of collective intelligence (CI) is distinguished from the concept of a general collective intelligence or GCI in that CI addresses a specific range of problems and therefore has narrow problem-solving ability, while GCI can potentially address any problem and therefore has general problem-solving ability. General problem-solving ability in groups has been represented by a GCI factor c defined in analogy with the individual intelligence factor g which measures IQ. While groups might have an innate GCI factor, GCI is a hypothetical platform that combines groups into a virtual collective cognition with a single well-defined thread of collective reasoning having general problem-solving ability, thereby creating an artificial c factor separate from the innate c factor. GCI also creates the opportunity to exponentially increase this c factor. This paper explores the differences between various forms of innate or artificial, as well as individual and group cognition.

Keywords: general collective intelligence; GCI; collective intelligence.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCI.2021.122707

International Journal of Collaborative Intelligence, 2021 Vol.2 No.3, pp.205 - 209

Received: 08 Mar 2021
Accepted: 19 Mar 2021
Published online: 06 May 2022 *

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