Abstract: In August of 2021, the Santa Fe Institute hosted a workshop on collective intelligence as part of its Foundations of Intelligence project. This project seeks to advance the field of artificial intelligence by promoting interdisciplinary research on the nature of intelligence. The workshop brought together computer scientists, biologists, philosophers, social scientists, and others to share their insights about how intelligence can emerge from interactions among multiple agents--whether those agents be machines, animals, or human beings. In this report, we summarize each of the talks and the subsequent discussions. We also draw out a number of key themes and identify important frontiers for future research. When building intelligent systems, the need to employ complex systems comprising a large number of more basic components seems inescapable. Brains are composed of billions of neurons, and digital computers are composed of billions of transistors. It is the myriad ...

In March of 2021, the Santa Fe Institute hosted a workshop as part of its Foundations of Intelligence in Natural and Artificial Systems project. This project seeks to advance the field of artificial intelligence by promoting interdisciplinary research on the nature of intelligence. During the workshop, speakers from diverse disciplines gathered to develop a taxonomy of intelligence, articulating their own understanding of intelligence and how their research has furthered that understanding. In this report, we summarize the insights offered by each speaker and identify the themes that emerged during the talks and subsequent discussions.

Suresh Venkatasubramanian (University of Utah), Nadya Bliss (Arizona State University), Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell University), and Melanie Moses (University of New Mexico) Overview Long gone are the days when computing was the domain of technical experts. We live in a world where computing technology--especially artificial intelligence--permeates every aspect of our daily lives, playing a significant role in augmenting and even replacing human decision-making in a broad range of situations. AIenabled technologies can adjust to your child's level of understanding by processing a pattern of mistakes; AI systems can leverage combinations of sensor inputs to choose and carry out braking actions in your car; web browsers with AI capabilities can reason from past observations of your searches to recommend a new cuisine in a new location. Innovations in AI have focused primarily on the questions of "what" and "how"--algorithms for finding patterns in web searches, for instance--without adequate attention to the possible harms (such as privacy, bias, or manipulation) and without adequate consideration of the societal context in which these systems operate. As a result of this tight technical focus, and the rapid, worldwide explosion in its use, AI has come with a storm of unanticipated socio-technical problems, ranging from algorithms that act in racially or gender-biased ways, get caught in feedback loops that perpetuate inequalities, or enable unprecedented behavioral monitoring surveillance that challenges the fundamental values of free, democratic societies.