This document discusses the importance of collaboration, collective intelligence, and empathy. It argues that empathy has historically enabled human cooperation and survival by allowing for collaboration. While collective intelligence emerges from online interactions, empathy is weaker online than in person because digital systems are not designed for emotional context. The project NEMO aims to study how to increase empathy and inter-brain synchronization digitally to improve online problem solving and collective intelligence.

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. The ability to collaborate has always been important
for the human species, it is important now, and in the
future, its importance will only increase.

6. Zaki & Ochsner (2012) “Compared to other animals, humans are slow, small, and weak”
Evolution may have favored the skills that permit cooperation.
For humans, empathy has been a survival skill, because it
enables collaboration.
By Mariano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=265811

7. 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
And even today, together is how we continue to attain the
greatest things and solve the biggest problems.

8. In the future, the importance of skills for collaboration will
only increase.

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

10. These tasks require skills in which human intelligence still
surpasses the artifical. The most important of these is empathy.

11. Collective intelligence best explains a team’s problem-
solving capability.

12. How does collective intelligence emerge?
"The key to high performance lay not in the content of a team’s
discussions but in the manner in which it was communicating."
Pentland, A., https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-of-building-great-teams

13. • Short speeches, no monologues
• The empathy skills of team members
• Responsiveness towards others
• Everyone gets a turn to speak

14. Empathy makes collaboration and
collective intelligence possible.

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

16. EMOTIONS
THOUGHTS
ACTIONS
Zaki & Ochsner, 2012
Cognitive empathy
Theory of mind
Affective empathy
Altruism
Prosocial concern
Empathic motivation

17. 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)

18. 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

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

20. We are living in a connected world.

21. Collective
intelligence does
emerge online.
And there too, empathy supports it’s
emergence.

22. There’s just one problem…

23. Empathy is weaker
online than in face-
to-face situations.

24. Why?

25. Because digital systems are not designed to take human
emotions into consideration.

26. As a result, the tools we have for expressing our emotions
are severely lacking in quality.

27. And when emotional information is not transmitted, it does
not touch us.
Without these signals, it becomes easy to misunderstand,
and even mistreat others.

30. Our project NEMO focuses on creating new, better ways of
transferring emotion information online and on seeking other
ways to support better online interaction and the emergence
of collective intelligence.

31. • basic research
• content development together with professionals working in
children’s media
• arranging hackathons (Emotion Hack Day) bringing
scientists and developers together to create and try out
quick solutions and applications
• application development
The project combines

32. 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?

33. In one sentence, we are asking whether we could reanimate
empathy in digital environments?

34. If we could, I believe it would improve our problem-solving
abilities, and support the emergence of more collective
intelligence.

35. I also believe that at the moment, we need our collective
intelligence perhaps more than ever.

36. As a species, we are still struggling for our existence on
this planet. We’re still facing the same problem as our
prehistoric ancestors.

37. However, instead of dangerous beasts, the threats to our
survival are of a completely different magnitude.

38. 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

39. Collective intelligence is our best shot at solving the
big problems we are facing in this time.

40. Empathy may yet again prove to be our most
important and most powerful survival skill.

41. katri.saarikivi@helsinki.fi @NEMO_hki Team NEMO

42. emotionhackday.com @emotionhackday