Imagine if you could bring 250 people together in a large room and have them discuss and debate an important issue, argue propositions and counter-propositions, and converge on responses that accurately reflect their collective knowledge, wisdom, values, and sensibilities.
Now imagine that you called this debate America 250c birthday and asked 250 randomly selected Americans to think about it the first three novelties What America has contributed to the world in the last 250 years. What would they think?
I know – it all sounds impossible.
After all, you can’t engage more than ten people in a productive conversation about anything. By and large, no one will get enough airtime to express their opinions or respond to others. That’s why typical business meetings or focus groups are never more than 8-10 people. Thoughtful real-time conversations just don’t scale.
A new category of AI technology has been called upon to address this “hyper-communication” greatly expands the size, scope, and effectiveness of large-scale discussions. AI agents connecting groups in real-time, enabling people discuss and debate issues on any scale. The goal is to allow hundreds, if not thousands, of participants to have thoughtful discussions where they can voice their opinions and argue the merits of any issue.
I first wrote about this new technology two years ago in an article on VentureBeat.Collective Super Intelligence.” In this part, I explain how large groups of people can be hyper-connected by artificial intelligence agents. enhancing the group’s collective intelligence. You can check out the science behind hyper-communication in a previous VentureBeat piece. Here I focus on a debate between 250 Americans about America’s birthday.
To do this, I asked the Yekdil AI team to randomly select a group of at least 250 Americans (with a wide spread and diverse mix of political and social demographics from every region of the country) and invite them to a twenty-minute online debate on the hyper-communications platform. Thinkscape enables massively scalable discussion via text, audio or video.
After joining, we asked the group to find this thread first three contributions What America has done to the world in the last 250 years – not an opinion poll, but a discussion of ideas, arguments, evidence and reasoning. The group came together on a number of top answers that surprised me – but on reflection, they were sensible and valid.
Before I get to the answers, let me show you what the argument looks like behind the scenes. There were 277 people in the parallel discussion forums, each discussing issues with four or five others. That’s the magic A swarm of AI agents which connects all the small groups with each other in a real-time discussion. At high speed it looks like this:
In the above debate, a group of 277 people emerged 94 different opinions and then narrowed it down to a top 10, then a top 3. In the gif above, we simply compile the top ten ideas that came up and battle it out for support during a live chat debate.
The most interesting aspect of wide-ranging discussions like this is not the answers, but the reasons that emerge to justify the answers. Here are the group’s main ideas behind the “three best innovations” America has given the world over the past 250 years:
#1: Internet: “Our collective perspective is that America’s greatest contribution to the world over the past 250 years is the Internet. It originated exclusively in the United States through academic and government research and has grown globally. It has transformed communications, democratized information and education, created opportunities for commerce, medicine, research, and cultural exchange, as well as enhanced important soft power and we have used it (misinformation, addiction, loss of privacy) and arguments that this is not a new, global, or uniquely American.
#2 Advances in Medicine: “Our collective perspective is that the United States has saved and extended the lives of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. American-developed vaccines have successfully eliminated or controlled once-deadly diseases, significantly extended life spans, and enabled broader societal and technological progress. U.S. cancer research has led to major advances in the safety of cancer treatments. Ingenuity has redefined health care and, ultimately, the global distribution of affordable drugs and vaccines.” Although it extends these benefits across borders, the US remains a major medical destination where people from all over the world travel to receive the most advanced treatments.
#3: Spreading Democracy: “Our collective perspective is that one of America’s most important global contributions is the country’s system of governance. The United States has long demonstrated democracy in practice as an enduring global model. The U.S. Constitution has provided a vital blueprint for representative government, inspired democratic movements and revolutions around the world, while strengthening international human rights and fundamental citizen voting and electoral empowerment. For its leaders, this framework has served as a foundational framework for broader societal advances and directly helped build thriving democracies around the world.
It’s important to remember that this is 100% human intelligence—a pure reflection of the collective knowledge, wisdom, and values of 277 randomly selected Americans. This is because of the role of AI agents hyper-communication system for connect people don’t replace them. Agents work to enable scalability human thought where each participant is given an optimized ability to express their views, respond to others, and come together on solutions based on their own merits. The only question remains – what should we ask next?
Louis Rosenberg He earned his PhD from Stanford University, was a professor at California State University (Cal Poly), and has been awarded more than 300 patents for his work in human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and collective intelligence.
