Google’s top engineer Ray Kurzweil is the futurist who holds the highest score when it comes to predicting the future. The so-called future teller has an accuracy rate of almost 86% for the things he predicts. For making predictions, as an old saying says, two heads are better than one, so does a whole set of thinkers is far better than only two. This is the simplest way to explain the concept of Unanimous AI known as “artificial swarm intelligence.” Instead of only Kurzweil making predictions, brains of hundreds of thousands of people are put to work to predict the future.
Unanimous AI founder and CEO Louis Rosenberg explained “Artificial Swarm Intelligence combines real-time human input with AI algorithms to produce an ’emergent hive mind’ that is smarter than a single human mind or software algorithms alone,” He said that Human swarms are very smart. “Not only do they consistently outperform the individuals who comprise the group, they often function at the level of experts.”
Unanimous AI’s artificial swarm intelligence is known as UNU. It had a flurry of accurate predictions including forecasts for the Super Bowl, Oscars, Stanley Cup, March Madness bracket and above all predicting U.S President Donald Trump as TIME Magazine’s 2016 Person of the Year.
The methodology Unanimous AI researchers used to arrive at the prediction begins when randomly selected individuals are connected to the Swarm AI platform. From then onwards, they start identifying the person least likely to win from TIME’s list of 33 candidates. In this years list, it took only a few minutes to narrow down the list to three candidates: Presidents Trump and Putin, and the #MeToo sexual harassment and assault awareness campaign. From there, it further narrowed the list to Putin and Trump.
The potential for the AI goes beyond Person of the Year predictions. Rosenberg told, “Swarm AI technology can be used to enable groups of people to reach optimal decisions, maximizing the combined insights of the population. This could be used for business decisions, political decisions, even personal decisions.”
The biggest potential for Swarm AI may reside in its human factor especially as AI is viewed by some with hearty skepticism and even a quite great deal of fear.
“When it comes to the long-term safety of AI, a big difference between a Swarm AI and a traditional AI is that swarming systems have real-time human participants as a core part of the system”, Rosenberg added, “Swarm AI incorporates human values, emotions, sensibilities, and interests into the answers that it generates. Put simply, a Swarm AI system keeps humans in the loop, creating intelligent systems that keep human morals is a central part of the system.”
Swarm AI has the potential to make AI less scary. Rosenberg explained, “Traditional AI has the capacity to replace humans with algorithms, increasing efficiency but losing human sensibilities. Swarm AI is a combination of human wisdom, values, and interests with the power of intelligent algorithms. The intent is not to replace people but to make us smarter by thinking together.”
The final prediction made by the swarm intelligence was the #MeToo campaign. This prediction was presented on 4th December 2017. This updated prediction has taken into consideration the most up to date factors that were required to influence the final decision.