Social Machinery and Intelligence

Social machines are systems formed by technical and human elements interacting in a structured manner. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of human participants to join such mechanisms, creating systems where interconnected digital and human components operate as a single machine capable of highly sophisticated behaviour. Under certain conditions, such systems can be described as autonomous and goal-driven agents. Many examples of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be regarded as instances of this class of mechanisms. We argue that this type of autonomous social machines has provided a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems marking a new phase in the field of AI. The consequences of this observation range from methodological, philosophical to ethical. On the one side, it emphasises the role of Human-Computer Interaction in the design of intelligent systems, while on the other side it draws attention to both the risks for a human being and those for a society relying on mechanisms that are not necessarily controllable. The difficulty by companies in regulating the spread of misinformation, as well as those by authorities to protect task-workers managed by a software infrastructure, could be just some of the effects of this technological paradigm

A Mathematical Theory of Big Data

This article presents a cardinality approach to big data, a fuzzy logicbased approach to big data, a similarity-based approach to big data, and a logical approach to the marketing strategy of social networking services. All these together constitute a mathematical theory of big data. This article also examines databases with infinite attributes. The research results reveal that relativity and infinity are two characteristics of big data. The relativity of big data is based on the theory of fuzzy sets. The relativity of big data leads to the continuum from small data to big data, big data-driven small data analytics to become statistical significance. The infinity of big data is based on the calculus and cardinality theory. The infinity of big data leads to the infinite similarity of big data. The proposed theory in this article might facilitate the mathematical research and development of big data, big data analytics, big data computing, and data science with applications in intelligent business analytics and business intelligence

On social machines for algorithmic regulation

Autonomous mechanisms have been proposed to regulate certain aspects of society and are already being used to regulate business organisations. We take seriously recent proposals for algorithmic regulation of society, and we identify the existing technologies that can be used to implement them, most of them originally introduced in business contexts. We build on the notion of ‘social machine’ and we connect it to various ongoing trends and ideas, including crowdsourced task-work, social compiler, mechanism design, reputation management systems, and social scoring. After showing how all the building blocks of algorithmic regulation are already well in place, we discuss the possible implications for human autonomy and social order. The main contribution of this paper is to identify convergent social and technical trends that are leading towards social regulation by algorithms, and to discuss the possible social, political, and ethical consequences of taking this path