The Human Swarm: collective intelligence through simple interactions

Nicolas Coucke (PhD Student, ULB)

Abstract. A single ant has got little idea of how it’s actions influence the processes happening at the level of its colony. Yet, through a combination of local interactions, a large number of individuals can lead to seemingly intelligent behaviour at the level of the population. On the other hand, as humans we have elaborate ideas about the world and have complex social interactions with each other. Hence, the fields of swarm intelligence and social psychology remained largely isolated from each other. However, humans rarely exploit their full cognitive capabilities to interact with each other; they quite often act in a swarm-like way. That said, insights from swarm intelligence might shed new light on human collective behaviour. Furthermore, problem solving strategies exploited by humans might serve as inspiration for the development of robot swarms.