Presented in Upgraded Life Festival 31.5.2016 by Katri Saarikivi. http://www.upgradedlifefestival.com/

1. The importance of collective
intelligence, and empathy in
digital environments
@katrisaarikivi

2. 1. The importance of collaboration and collective intelligence
2. The neuroscientific perspective to empathy
3. Collaboration and empathy in the digital realm?

3. 1. The importance of collaboration and collective intelligence
2. The neuroscientific perspective to empathy
3. Collaboration and empathy in the digital realm?

4. People come together to survive and flourish.

5. By Mariano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=265811

6. By NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA (Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

8. In the future, people will focus on tasks
in which we are better than the "robot".

11. • Short speeches, no monologues
• Empathy
• Responsiveness towards others
• Everyone gets a turn to speak

12. Empathy makes collaboration and
collective intelligence possible.

13. 1. The importance of collaboration and collective intelligence
2. The neuroscientific perspective to empathy
3. Collaboration and empathy in the digital realm?

14. EMOTIONS
THOUGHTS
ACTIONS
Zaki & Ochsner, 2012
We are all mentalists
Emotions are highly
contagious
Humans are
altruistic by nature

15. Things that increase empathy
• Reading literary fiction (Kidd et al., 2013)
• Playing Rock Band together (Martin et al., 2015)
• Moving together in synchrony:
bouncing (Cirelli et al., 2014)
clapping (Hove et al., 2013)
rocking in rocking chairs (Valdesolo et al., 2010)

16. The two-brain perspective
• The greater the extent of neural coupling between a
speaker and listener, the better the understanding.
Stephens et al., 2010
• Rhythmic activity of brains synchronizes during
interaction. Dumas et al., 2010; Müller et al.,
2013

17. 1. The importance of collaboration and collective intelligence
2. The neuroscientific perspective to empathy and interaction
3. Collaboration and empathy in the digital realm?

18. 1. The importance of collaboration and collective intelligence
2. The neuroscientific perspective to empathy and interaction
3. Collaboration and empathy in the digital realm?

19. We are living in a connected world.

26. Research questions include:
• What is the significance of inter-brain synchronization for the
success of joint problem-solving?
• Does synchronization of the brain’s oscillatory activity happen
online?
• If not, could we make it happen through simultaneous brainwave
entrainment?
• Could we increase emotion contagion online with the help of sensor
technology / computer vision algorithms?

27. Could we reanimate empathy in digital environments?

28. By No machine-readable author provided. Mbz1 assumed (based on copyright claims). - No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2388690