Immersion was founded in 1993 with the mission of bringing the sense of touch to computing. Our technology, TouchSense, is embedded in computer peripheral devices and allows users to reach in and physically interact with content on their computer screens.
— Louis B. Rosenberg
Swarms are one very simple way of keeping ourselves ahead of the machines.
If you sit at your desk and reach and grab a cup of coffee, you don't look directly at the cup, focus on it, and get your fingers lined up before grabbing the coffee. In real life, you reach for a cup that you see out of the corner of your eye, and when you feel it, you know you can grab it.
Swarm intelligence is like a brain of brains.
We developed a technology called artificial swarm intelligence, which is all about tapping the inherent knowledge, wisdom, intuition of groups.
A swarm finds the solution people best agree upon. It optimizes collective support, whereas a poll tells us how we disagree.
We take the sense of touch for granted. Think about it: Without it, you're missing one of the basic senses that enables you to interact with the world.
Forcing polarized groups into a swarm allows them to find the answer that most people are satisfied with.
Taking a vote or poll is a great simple way to take a decision, but it doesn't help a group find consensus. It actually polarizes people and highlights the differences between them. People end up getting entrenched in their views.
The long-term value of amplifying the intelligence of people is a lot more important than betting on sports.
We can't stop the development of smarter and smarter artificial intelligences. So our alternative is to make ourselves smarter so that we always stay one step ahead.
In computers, we do all kinds of manual manipulations. We grab and drag icons. We click on and open windows. We pull down a screen. We stretch a screen. We scroll up and down.
A poll finds the average opinion of a group. It takes the temperature of a crowd. A swarm focuses a group together, in real time, and has them work together as a system to answer a question instead.
UNU provides a continuous feedback loop of the group's preference for a choice, as well as its conviction. People are adjusting their levels of conviction based on the completeness of their own knowledge on the subject.
A poll will give you the most popular answer but not the answer that optimizes the preference of a group.
The reason that fish form schools, birds form flocks, and bees form swarms is that they are smarter together than they would be apart. They don't take a vote; they don't take a poll: they form a system. They are all interactive and make a decision together in real time.
Politicians have conflicting values but not conflicting knowledge.
We focus on a unique form of artificial intelligence called artificial swarm intelligence.
There is a lot of work out there to take people out of the loop in things like medical diagnosis. But if you are taking humans out of the loop, you are in danger of ending up with a very cold form of AI that really has no sense of human interest, human emotions, or human values.
Feel provides an important channel of information.
Nature creates natural swarms. UNU uses networking technology and algorithms to take advantage of the knowledge, wisdom, and insights of a large group of people by allowing them to think as one.
When a species wants to tap the collective intelligence of a population, they don't take a poll; they don't take a vote. They form a real-time system.
We've been astonished by how good groups working together can predict the outcomes of events.
You have the sense of touch because you need it.
How does nature amplify the intelligence of groups? It forms swarms.
Beyond individual intelligence, nature has also cultivated intelligence through swarms. For example, bees, birds and fish act in a more intelligent way when acting together as a swarm, flock or school.
