Artificial Intelligence for Collective Intelligence: A National-Scale Research Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning often address challenges that are relatively monolithic: determine the safest action for an autonomous car; translate a document from English to French; analyse a medical image to detect a cancer; answer a question about a difficult topic. These kinds of challenge are important and worthwhile targets for AI research. However, an alternative set of challenges exist that are collective in nature: help to minimise a pandemic's impact by coordinating mitigating interventions; help to manage an extreme weather event using real-time physical and social data streams; help to avoid a stock market crash by managing interactions between trading agents; help to guide city developers towards more sustainable coordinated city planning decisions; help people with diabetes to collaboratively manage their condition while preserving privacy.