Collective Intelligence and the Problem of its Demarcation in Technology, Nature, and Society

Abstract

Introduction. The article explores collective intelligence (CI) in nature, society, and technology, highlighting its essence and criteria by which it can be demarcated from similar phenomena. Methodology and sources. The system approach is applied, which seeks to consider CI in relation to a specific substrate. Critical and hermeneutic methods are used to analyze its definitions. Complex determination of the particular form of CI by the level of system organization with its contradictions is provided by the dialectical method. Results and discussion. The technocratic vision of CI reduces it to distributed forms of AI. Their identification is irrelevant as the magistral approach to intelligence considers it a complex phenomenon (although some interpret it as at least vital, while others only as a sociocultural thing). AI is implemented by an ontologically simple substrate, remaining an imitation of a narrow part of intelligence’s capabilities. Artificial «CI» is also a simulacrum of the collective, since the latter makes sense as an integration of individuals, while here they are reduced to network nodes. In nature, the adequacy of articulation depends on the line of development of the living. Swarm intelligence is a collective without intelligence, because synchronous behavior is implemented by generic instinctive programs. The approach that every individual is CI is irrelevant, since it is iteratively divided into compartments, being reduced to the non-living. Full-fledged CI is attributed to humans: only here intellectual activity achieves autonomy from narrow biological specialization and is accompanied by joint mental experience (We consciousness). Conclusion. Human intelligence is social, because it is focused not so much on adaptation as on purposeful praxis. CI reflects the optimal type of relationship between the generic and the individual in cognitive activity. CI is not a totality or a mechanistic aggregate but an emergent sum that integrates the potential of individuals in the unity of diversity.