| Grant number: | 17/23288-0 |
| Support Opportunities: | Regular Research Grants |
| Start date: | March 01, 2018 |
| End date: | February 29, 2020 |
| Field of knowledge: | Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Physics |
| Principal Investigator: | José Fernando Fontanari |
| Grantee: | José Fernando Fontanari |
| Host Institution: | Instituto de Física de São Carlos (IFSC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil |
Abstract
Cooperative work has long been explored by nature as revealed by the collective structures built by slime molds, termites and ants. These structures and social organizations may be viewed as the organisms' solutions to the problems that endanger their existence. Such 'collective intelligence' suggests that those organizations are selected so as to optimize the problem-solving competence at the group-level. Within the perspective of human work organizations, this conjecture acquires an important practical connotation: What is the optimal organization and composition of a task force? The answer is germane to the economy of developed countries, whose work force is formed mainly by people who 'solve' problems. The main topic of this research project addresses a cooperation paradigm for the organization of task forces, the so-called blackboard systems, using agent-based simulations to model the brainstorming of a group of experts who are solving a common problem with a blackboard, where they can write and read hints to solve the problem. Our goal is to investigate how the problem-solving performance depends on the number of individuals and on their individual propensities to read and write on the blackboard. A topic, which is also related to human work performance, is the wisdom of crowds or Vox Populi revealed by the surprisingly good accuracy of the collective estimate of a quantity given by the median of the independent individual estimates. Another relevant issue in this context is the role played by the number of estimates, which may shed light on the explanatory power of Condorcet's Jury theorem on the Vox Populi phenomenon. Finally, the third topic of the research project addresses the modeling of the Physarum polycephalum- an amoeba-like organism - that can solve mazes and find efficient and robust transport networks that pass through a given number of locations (food sources), being thus the most remarkable known instance of collective intelligence. (AU)
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