San Francisco, CA – Unanimous AI, pioneers of Swarm AI technology, announced today that is has been named a grantee of the Nesta Collective Intelligence grants program. The California-based AI company will use the funding to further its research into collective intelligence and optimized decision-making. The funded work will compare outcomes using the Swarm platform to traditional voting methods in an experiment designed to help groups find socially acceptable outcomes on divisive topics.
A combination of real-time human insights and AI algorithms, Swarm AI technology turns networked teams into super-intelligent systems inspired by the way birds flock, fish school, and bees swarm to amplify their collective intelligence.
Nesta, the innovation foundation, launched the collective intelligence grants in September 2018. Nesta is offering grants of up to £20,000 for experiments that generate new knowledge and evidence on how to design for and apply collective intelligence (combining human and machine intelligence) to solve social problems.
Unanimous AI’s research will test whether algorithms modeled on Swarm Intelligence behaviors in bees and fish can enable groups with conflicting political views to find collectively preferable solutions as compared to legacy methods like ranked voting (Borda count) and pairwise voting (Condorect method). Given recent research that shows traditional voting methods can actually increase discord and polarization, an AI-powered method that could increase voter satisfaction could have implications that go beyond political questions to include any decision-making group seeking optimized results.
“Our mission is to help groups make better decisions,” said Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI. “We were inspired by the way natural swarms form intelligent systems to solve complex problems. The Nesta Collective Intelligence grant will accelerate our ability to bring this power to connected groups.”
Unanimous AI’s new SaaS platform will make Swarm technology more accessible than ever.
More information about the Nesta Collective Intelligence grants is available here: https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/collective-intelligence-grants/
About Nesta
Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better.
We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society. We’ve spent over 20 years working out the best ways to make change happen through research and experimenting, and we’ve applied that to our work in innovation policy, health, education, government innovation and the creative economy and arts.
Nesta is based in the UK and supported by a financial endowment. We work with partners around the globe to bring bold ideas to life to change the world for good. www.nesta.org.uk
About Unanimous AI
Unanimous AI is the maker of Swarm®, the world’s first SaaS platform for amplifying the intelligence of business teams. The Swarm platform and Swarm AI technology from Unanimous was recognized as SXSW’s 2018 “Artificial Intelligence Innovation of the Year.” More at: unanimous.ai/swarm
Want to learn more about our Swarm AI technology? Check out our TED talk below…
