Slides for talk given at the WWW2013 Workshop on Social Machines

1. WWW2013 Workshop
SOCIAL MACHINES
Nigel Shadbolt

2. Framing the Context for
SOCIAL MACHINES
Nigel Shadbolt

3. The order of social machines
Real life is and must be full of all kinds of social
constraint – the very processes from which
society arises. Computers can help if we use
them to create abstract social machines on the
Web: processes in which the people do the
creative work and the machine does the
administration… The stage is set for an
evolutionary growth of new social engines.
Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web, 1999

4. More people
Moremachines
Big Data
Big Compute
Conventional
Computation
Social
Machines
Social
Networking
The order of social machines

5. The order of social machines

6. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

7. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

8. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

9. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

10. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

11. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

12. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

13. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

14. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them
(i) problems solved by the scale of human
participation on the Web
(ii) timely mobilisation and of
people, technology and information
resources
(iii) incentive to participate with which
increases as more participate
(iv) access to or else the ability to generate
large amounts of relevant data
(v) confidence in the quality of the data
(vi) trust in the agents and process
(vii) intuitive interfaces and user-centred
(viii) works cross platform
(ix) efficient, effective and equitable
(x) exploits the power of open - Open
Source, Open Standards, Open Data, Open
Licences

15. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

16. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

17. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

18. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

19. What are these Social Machines…
• From the routine and mundane
to the extraordinary…
• All aspects of our lives…
• Augmenting our intelligence…
• Augmenting our machines…
• We barely know how to
– Describe them
– Classify them
– Design them
– Anticipate them
– Observe them

20. Social Machine Ecosystems
• Social machines do not exist in
isolation
• Ecology of Social Machines -
structure of the
environment, food
chains, producers and consumers
• Evolutionary elements -
populations (individuals and
species), traits/characteristics, he
redity, genotypes and phenotypes
• Evolutionary mechanisms -
variation
(mutation, migration, HGT, geneti
c drift), selection
• Evolutionary outcomes -
adaption, co-
evolution, competition, co-
operation, speciation, extinction

21. Social Machine Ecosystems
• Social machines do not exist in
isolation
• Ecology of Social Machines -
structure of the
environment, food
chains, producers and consumers
• Evolutionary elements -
populations (individuals and
species), traits/characteristics, he
redity, genotypes and phenotypes
• Evolutionary mechanisms -
variation
(mutation, migration, HGT, geneti
c drift), selection
• Evolutionary outcomes -
adaption, co-
evolution, competition, co-
operation, speciation, extinction

22. Social Machines are NOT Turing
Machines
• they do contain conventional algorithmic
components
• but much else is different
• a social machine will start with an incomplete
specification that grows and evolves to cover more
of the problem via interaction
• a social machine achieves participation through
local incentives which become reinforced as the…
• incentive for an individual to supply data to the
algorithm increases as more individuals participate
• a social machine has a notion of completeness that
is a social rather than mathematical issue
• a social machine will not usually have a notion of
the correct output or termination… rather it runs
continuously

23. Social Machine Trends
• The power of people
• The power of open
• The power of machines
• The power of data
• Scale and network
effects
• Ruthlessly Darwinian

24. What might Social Machines do in
future…
• Coordinate 10 million people to stop crime?
• Millions of people supporting themselves and others in
the delivery of efficient transportation?
• Or any scale of people supporting themselves and others
in the delivery of well being?
• If we can put a man on the moon with 100,000 humans
what can we do with 100,000,000 humans and the
largest compute and data fabric in history?
• Social machines to delight and empower, absorb and
empower…