Complex Systems and Collective Intelligence
A CCS’24 Satellite Workshop held on September 2nd 2024, Exeter, UK
The “Complex Systems and Collective Intelligence” Satellite Workshop was held on Monday 2nd September in Exeter. It was well attended by those working in the Complex Systems and Collective Intelligence sphere, alongside researchers, academics and those simply wanting to learn more about the topic.
We would like to thank all those who joined us, presented papers, provided posters, gave talks and participated in discussions. It was a great day and we hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we did.
As part of the wider 2024 Conference on Complex Systems this workshop brought together researchers interested in leveraging complexity science for achieving collective intelligence in real world domains such as healthcare, finance, smart cities, pandemics and the environment.
Alongside a variety of research talks and discussion sessions there were two exciting keynote addresses from Susan Banducci, Professor and Director of the Exeter Q-Step Centre, University of Exeter and Aleks Berditchevskaia, Principal Researcher, Centre for Collective Intelligence Design at Nesta.
This event was also an opportunity for attendees to learn more about AI4CI, the UK’s National AI Research Hub on AI for Collective Intelligence, and its future funding plans to support research into complex systems and collective intelligence.
Workshop Vision
To address society’s most pressing challenges (climate change, epidemiology, financial stability, sustainability, healthcare, etc.) we must be able to reliably engineer important new kinds of Collective Intelligence:
“Connected communities of people, devices, data and software collaboratively sensing and interacting in real-time to achieve positive outcomes at multiple scales.”
Whether we are attempting to minimise the impact of the next global pandemic, prevent financial instability, encourage sustainable and liveable cities, combat social polarisation and climate disinformation on social media, or integrate clinical care and social support for patients with chronic illnesses, enabling smart behaviour at the level of the individual to inform and be informed by intelligence gathered from the collective is key.
Complex systems approaches are central to meeting this challenge.
This workshop brought together researchers from the fields of complex systems, collective intelligence, AI, human-computer interaction and key application domains such as smart cities, the environment, epidemics, finance, healthcare, etc., to present and discuss work that advances our understanding of how better to achieve collective intelligence in the real-world.
Satellite Schedule
| 09.30 – 09.45 | Seth Bullock | Workshop Welcome |
| 09.45 – 10.30 | Susan Banducci | Keynote: Elections, Social Media and the Future |
| 10.30 – 10.45 | Hao Cui & Taha Yasseri | AI-enhanced Collective Intelligence: The State of the Art and Prospects |
| 10.45 – 11.00 | Yaniv Proselkov, Liming Xu & Alexandra Brintrup | Lightning Talk: Enabling Viable Supply Networks with Cooperative-Distributed Local-Decentralised Financial Control |
| Niek Kerssies | Lightning Talk: Location, range, movement: modeling physical constraints on the formation of collective information networks | |
| Mariko Ito & Akira Sasaki | Lightning Talk: Optimum aggregation of opinions in sequential decision-making considering preceding casting vote | |
| Ana Teixeira de Melo, Andreia Sofia Teixeira, Leo Caves, Letícia Renault, Paula Duarte Lopes, Philip Garnett, Raquel Ribeiro & Filipe Santos | Lightning Talk: Requirements and challenges for AI-supported systems of (co)augmented intelligences organised by complex thinking | |
| Yining Yuan, Weiru Liu & Nirav Ajmeri | Lightning Talk: Hybrid Sanctioning for Cooperation Emergence in Agent Societies | |
| 11.00 – 11.30 | COFFEE BREAK w/POSTERS |
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| 11.30 – 12.15 | Samuel Downes, Amberly Brigden, Kenton O’Hara & Max Western | Investigating the potential of large-language model based conversational AI agents to augment community-based lifestyle interventions for underserved populations |
| Khulud Alharthi, Kirsten Ayris, Henry Hickson, Mickey Li, Daan Scheepens, Avgi Stavrou, Matimba Swana, Elliott Scott, Georgios Tzoumas & Sabine Hauert | Utilising Collective Intelligence for Plant Pollination through Human and Robot Teams | |
| Neha Mittal, Fai Fung, Lottie Woods, Aleks Berditchevskaia, Rita Marques & Christopher Edgar | Learning from expert elicitation for climate decision-making: Informing participatory AI in climate services | |
| 12.15 – 13.00 | Seth Bullock | AI4CI Session |
| 13.00 – 14.30 | LUNCH BREAK & CONFERENCE KEYNOTE | |
| 14.30 – 14.45 | Seth Bullock | Workshop Welcome Back |
| 14.45 – 15.30 | Aleks Berditchevskaia | Keynote: Collective Intelligence Research and the Real World |
| 15.30 – 16.00 | Srijoni Majumdar & Evangelos Pournaras | Consensus-based Participatory Budgeting for Legitimacy: Decision Support via Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning |
| Vittorio Nespeca, Tina Comes & Frances Brazier (Pre- recorded) | Learning to select communication hubs: Capturing the emergence of boundary spanning in volatile conditions | |
| 16.00 – 16.30 | COFFEE BREAK w/POSTERS | |
| 16.30 – 17.00 | Ariel Flint Ashery, Luca Maria Aiello and Andrea Baronchelli | The Role of Bias in the Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions in Populations of Large Language Model-based Agents |
| Daniel Collins, Conor Houghton, Nirav Ajmeri | Fostering Multi-Agent Cooperation through Implicit Responsibility | |
| 17.00 – 18.00 | Hywel Williams | Tippings Points Session: Introduction |
| Steve Smith | General overview of positive tipping points and some areas of application | |
| Chris Boulton | Early warning signals for tipping in electric vehicle adoption | |
| Emma Bailey | Dietary shifts and positive tipping in the food system | |
| Viktoria Spaiser | AI-based nudges to pro-environmental behaviours | |
| WORKSHOP CLOSES | ||
The AI4CI Research Hub
This workshop is organised by the AI4CI Research Hub, which is a research collaboration that brings together leading research groups from the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Glasgow, Ulster and UCL to form an integrated centre of gravity for a growing nationwide activity combining innovative research and development, community and capacity building, career development, public engagement, research translation, policymaking and governance organised around a clear central theme: new AI for Collective Intelligence.
Contact Us
If you are interested in joining the Hub's research effort, or want to find out more please get in touch.