Registration for virtual participation in SFI’s three-day Collective Intelligence Symposium & Short Course (CISSC) is now open. With a sold-out in-person event, organizers are offering live streaming, June 20-22, of all talks and discussions, as well as virtual access to posters. The $100 online-only registration fee also provides participants access to watch recordings of the meeting at their convenience. Seats via Zoom are limited. Interested participants are encouraged to register soon. Journalists are encouraged to email news@santafe.edu with their press accreditation.
The CISSC, organized by SFI Professor Jessica Flack and Caitlin McShea, will explore foundational ideas in the emerging field of collective intelligence. The first day, June 20, will be "devoted to a broad discussion of first-principles approaches from the physical and natural sciences for deriving group performance from microscopic, individual-level behavior and interactions," says Flack.
“First principles are fairly well-established in other academic fields,” says SFI Professor Chris Kempes, who will present a talk on first-principles thinking in biology. “We have physical laws as first principles in physics, Turing machines and algorithmic complexity in computer science. It will be interesting to start identifying the first principles of collective intelligence.”
Speakers on day one include Guy Theraluz (CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier), SFI Professors Geoffrey West, Kempes, and Flack, Nikta Fakhri (MIT), and Maxim Raginsky (University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana). The day concludes with a Community Lecture with SFI Miller Scholar Andrea Wulf, who will talk about her book "Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics & the Invention of the Self.”
Day two, June 21, explores how we measure intelligence — in collectives including animal societies, brains, and human societies and groups. The day will feature speakers including SFI President David Krakauer, SFI Professor Melanie Mitchell, David Ha (stability.ai), Cesar Hidalgo (University of Toulouse), and Iain Couzin (Max Planck, Konstanz).
The meeting concludes on day three, June 22, with discussions in the morning session about the dynamics of collective systems, and will feature SFI External Professor Orit Peleg (UC Boulder) and SFI Professor Mirta Galesic. In the afternoon session, meeting participants and speakers will explore the relationship between collectives and the emergence of radical ideas. This session will include a special panel featuring filmmaker Godfrey Reggio in discussion with Flack.
For a complete list of confirmed speakers, program details, and access to virtual registration, visit the Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas event page.
The CISSC is sponsored by the Miller Omega Program, with additional support from the McKinnon Family Foundation and SFI Science.