Objective

Collective intelligence platforms, where large numbers of people contribute their skills, resources, and knowledge in a collaborative way, have emerged in recent years as a new type of socio-technical systems that use the creativity of their users to solve complex problems. However, digital infrastructures that support such collective intelligence are only successful and sustainable in the long term if they manage to adapt to the evolution of the ways in which they are used, and co-evolve meaningfully with their user base. The overall objective of this atelier is to build a prototypical Web-based collective intelligence system that has such adaptive capabilities. Participants will be trained in the fundamental theoretical and technological building blocks of such systems using the SmartSociety software platform, which contains many of the key components to engineering collective adaptive systems successfully.

Format

The atelier will involve daily lectures on each of the key technologies used in the SmartSociety platform, and the rest of the day group work implementation of an actual case study. The theoretical introductions will focus only very briefly on general material, and then go into aspects specific to collective adaptive systems for the most part.

Prerequisites

Participants are expected to have general mathematical literacy (background in mathematical notation, discrete mathematics, probability theory), and good programming skills. Experience with web programming (REST, Javascript, etc) is strongly recommended, as this will be extensively used in the practical part of the atelier.

Programme

Monday 5th September
15:30-17:00 Lecture: Introduction to Collective Adaptive Systems
Michael Rovatsos, University of Edinburgh

Tuesday 6th September
11:00-13:00 Lecture: Overview of SmartSociety Platform
Tommaso Schiavinotto, U-Hopper Srl
14:30-17:00 Lab: Experimentation with Orchestration Manager

Wednesday 7th September
11:00-13:00 Lecture: Introduction to semantic privacy technologies
Ronald Chenu-Abente, University of Trento
14:30-17:00 Lab: Experimentation with Peer Manager

Thursday 8th September
11:00-13:00 Lecture: Introduction to incentive mechanisms
Michael Rovatsos, University of Edinburgh
14:30-17:00 Lab: Experimentation with Incentives Manager

Friday 9th September
11:00-13:00 Lecture: Value-sensitive design
Mark Hartswood, University of Oxford
14:30-17:00 Lab: Completion of implementation
17:30-19:30 Final presentation

Abstract: Society is moving towards a socio-technical ecosystem in which physical and virtual dimensions of life are intertwined and where people interactions ever more take place with or are mediated by machines. Hybrid Diversity-aware Collective Adaptive Systems (HDA-CAS) is a new generation of sociotechnical systems where humans and machines synergetically complement each other and operate collectively to achieve their goals. HDA-CAS introduce the fundamental properties of hybridity and collectiveness, hiding from the users the complexities associated with managing the collaboration and coordination of machine and human computing elements. In this paper we present an HDA-CAS system called SmartSociety, supporting computations with hybrid human/machine collectives. We describe the platform’s architecture and functionality, validate it on two real-world scenarios involving human and machine elements and present a performance evaluation.

Citation: O. Scekic, D. Miorandi, T. Schiavinotto, D. I. Diochnos, A. Hume, R. Chenu-Abente, H.-L. Truong, M. Rovatsos, I. Carreras, S. Dustdar, F. Giunchiglia, SmartSociety — A Platform for Collaborative People-Machine Computation, The 8th IEEE International Conference on Service Oriented Computing & Applications (SOCA’15), 19-21 October 2015, Rome, Italy.

Download: http://bit.ly/1Wz4eN5

SmartSociety is taking part in ICT DAYS, an initiative by the University of Trento‘s DISI (Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science), dedicated to the broad subject of Information and Communication Technology.

ICT DAYS has had many years of success since its launch on 2009. It serves as a meeting point for companies and university students, organizes a hackathon and attracts prospective students through its Education Day. The initiative also features a series of communicative events, such as seminars, demos and contests.

SmartSociety’s panel on the 19th of March is titled:

Collaboration between humans and machines: Promises and Perils

Abstract: In today’s hybrid society we are unconsciously observed and continuously assisted by ICT systems. How to make sure that this takes place with the right coordination and ethical control? The panel will report insights from the project SMARTSOCIETY funded by the EC under FP7 Future Emerging Technologies programme.

For more information, please visit the event website.

Introduction: Worldwide, societies are seeing rapid change in modes of social interaction and organization. These new interaction modes are predicated on emerging forms of information infrastructure together with rapidly evolving devices, systems, and applications that are ever more deeply interwoven with our social fabric. Computers and humans complement each other, as there are activities that are difficult or impossible for one and easy for the other. We argue that the key to activating the potential for the new generation of high-impact technologies and services aimed at enhancing human problem-solving capabilities lies in realizing a tight symbiosis between human and computers. In this symbiosis, information and communications technology (ICT) becomes an unobtrusive, pervasive extension of individuals and groups, empowering and enabling them to achieve ambitious objectives. We believe that a new form of intelligence can be devised to tackle complex and challenging problems, by exploiting,in a coordinated and holistic fashion, the complementary strengths of human and machines through the integration of computers, the Internet, individuals, and society. We term this integration “social collective intelligence” (SCI).

Citation: “Programming” Social Collective Intelligence. Daniele Miorandi and Lorenzo Maggi. In IEEE Technology and Society, special issue on Technology for Collective Action (2014).

Download: http://bit.ly/2j95LKO