WEBVTT - Are you smarter than an ant swarm? 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:13.960 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.439 My name is Robert Lamb, and we are part of 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.840 a machine. Um, I think pretty much most unless you 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.439 happened to be like that. That's sort of that iconic 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.960 like guy living out in the middle of the desert 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:30.560 in a shack or you know, or you know, Georgia 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.519 O'Keefe shutting herself away off the Yeah, living off the 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.360 grid and not having any contact with people. Unless you're 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.159 doing that kind of life, you're probably part of of 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.080 the machine or a machine. Yeah, Like I got up 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.239 this morning, got got into Marta. Suddenly I'm in the 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:46.920 I'm in the crowd with the with the with the 0:00:46.960 --> 0:00:51.080 other commuters, and I'm instantly part of something that It's 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.800 kind of like a big animal, like a big super organism, 0:00:54.800 --> 0:01:01.080 a big cranky, uh, kind of stinky superganism that crams 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.400 itself into trains and delivers itself to the front door 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:07.920 of its respective workplaces where it becomes part of another 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:11.360 super exactly. Yeah, I mean yeah, just like us How 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.160 Stuff Works, Discovery Communications. It's a giant thing and we're 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.160 all just like parts of it. We're part of the hive. Yeah, 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:20.400 and we're not I'm not. Aga'm not saying that as 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:24.160 a as any kind of a slam on on Demand 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.360 or on Corporate America or any anything like that, because 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:29.479 it's it's the more we look, it's like, no matter 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:32.160 where you are again, unless you're living in the desert 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:34.840 and that's in that shack or or you know, or 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:38.040 up in an isolated apartment on the upper east Side 0:01:38.040 --> 0:01:40.800 with the tinfoil over all the windows, you're a part 0:01:40.840 --> 0:01:44.080 of some sort of social animal. Right, you're part of 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.759 a community. We call it a community. Right now, bees 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:49.800 do it, we call it a swarm. If ants do it, 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.520 we call it. I guess that's a swarm too, or 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.320 an army at any rate. Yeah, and uh, when when 0:01:56.360 --> 0:01:58.760 birds do it and they do it in mass, in 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:04.520 thousands and cousins of birds and they undulate over the horizon, 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.360 we just call that scary because we're like, what is that? 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.200 It looks like a funnel cloud of birds coming at us, 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.840 And then why is it doing that? And beady eyes? Right, 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.519 my wife finds the the the tongues terrifying on birds, 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:21.639 like their black tongues. She's anytime we go to Our Thomas, 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:23.880 which is a restaurant here in the Atlanta that birds 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.960 and cages outside. She's always little freaked out, like the 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.840 two Cans. Did you know that that guy started the 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.760 Popeye's chain? And yeah, and Our Thomas is sort of 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:34.239 his way of giving back to the community in terms 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.160 of healthy food and birds. Interesting, Yeah, there you go, 0:02:38.720 --> 0:02:44.320 but no, but yes, birds, super swarms, super organisms happen 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:47.679 every single day. And one of the reasons they're they're 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:49.880 kind of that they can often be unnerving is that 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:52.440 it's he gets down to the basic idea that an aunt, 0:02:52.440 --> 0:02:55.160 a single aunt. There's nothing I can out smart in aunt. 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.480 Most people can't. Everybody can can out smart And then 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:00.600 you can take a magnifying glass too and burn it too. 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:03.200 If you were a three year old who a single bird, 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.200 you can take that on with a tennis racket. Um, 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:08.600 if it's bees, one b is not an issue. But 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.920 when they swarm, hey, you're dealing with a large mass 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.480 of things, but also you're dealing with something you can 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:19.279 You're suddenly dealing with something that has um an emergent intelligence, 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:23.800 that that has a it has it's it basically is 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:28.640 it is a macro intelligence that arises from local interactions, right, 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:32.720 and not merely simple interactions, uh you know that are 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:37.920 necessary to coordinate movement, but a group intelligence that learns 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.840 that achieves goals, and it engages in an overall self 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.119 preservation Okay. And that's what I think is so cool 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.440 about super organisms, like you said, on their own as 0:03:47.480 --> 0:03:50.640 individuals and they're a little worthless right in the in 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:55.760 the insect community, but together they can accomplish incredible things. 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:58.600 And it's still somewhat of a mystery to scientists. I mean, 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.200 they've begun to figure out why birds and swarms of 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:08.160 thousands can uh turn themselves into these crazy vortex um 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:12.360 circular shapes and and not run into each other or 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.040 drop dead in collision, you know. Yeah, Or or like 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:17.479 fish that that sort that get into a swarm and 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.080 it kind of looks like a single thing, like a 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:22.680 single larger sea creature. Yeah, which is so cool. If 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:24.880 you've never seen footage on that before, it's really worth 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.760 checking out. Um. But but again it's pointing to that 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:33.720 sort of intelligence which is far superior than any individual one. Yeah. 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.880 In in Steve Johnson's book Emergence, which deals with this 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:40.120 and so generally regard is a really good uh introduction 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.440 to to all this. Uh he uh. He lays out 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:47.000 like a few uh necessary items on the checklist for 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.600 emergence intelligence. One of them is a critical massive participation. 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.480 So you need a like a minimum number of participants 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.240 in a social group for like, like like if I 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.120 was in Marta and it was like three dudes, Uh, 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:01.200 there's not really gon be much of a It's it's 0:05:01.240 --> 0:05:03.200 kind of like a mob, you know, like like if 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:06.560 three guys are standing outside of a of a business 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.480 protesting that people aren't gonna say there's a mob out there. 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:11.839 There's no telling what it'll do. No, it's just like Joe, 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:14.960 Charlie and Mary and you can sort of deal with 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:16.960 them on an individual basis and there's there's not going 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.080 to be that that thing that takes over um well, 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:22.279 and even in riots, right, there seems to be some 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.600 sort of self organizing aspect to it. Right. Yeah, there's 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:28.040 been a there's been some really interesting stuff coming out 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:31.000 recently talking about the at the time of this recording, 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.960 current protests in Egypt. You know, because it gets down 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.279 to like you can't with a with a group like this, 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:39.200 you can't say oh, there's the leader. No, there are 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.200 money leaders there that are that have sort of organizing 0:05:42.360 --> 0:05:45.200 roles in it, But you can't. That's I mean, that's 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.520 why the mob is such a scary prospect to any 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.960 um seat of power, because what does it want? You can't. 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.040 It's it's you're dealing with it with an intelligence that 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.560 can't be boiled down to a single individual, right right, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.880 that's right. You can't appease that one single individual. And 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:02.880 yet there's an intelligence that comes from that, and there 0:06:02.920 --> 0:06:06.560 are demands that come from that. Yeah. Like like I 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.760 would like to just to think back to like a corporation, 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.520 like like any kind of corporation or big business, Like 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:15.440 what motivates everyone? Like the lowly creative type may just 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.960 want to make something they can feel proud of. The 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:21.200 the sales rep might be motivated by, you know, inner 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:24.159 department competition, who can get the biggest sale, who's gonna 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:26.720 be the top seller? Um, who's gonna get yelled out 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.760 by Alec Baldwin? Uh. The account it may just have 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.200 eyes on you know the bonus uh, and the CEO 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:34.520 is you know, it might just be chasing the American 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:37.719 dream of filling his solid gold submarine with Brazilian supermodels 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.360 and circus pandas you know, Yeah, that's it's it's it's 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:44.200 within their grass. So so yeah, but when you talk 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:47.320 about the corporation as a whole, like what does it want? What? 0:06:47.640 --> 0:06:50.200 You know, you're dealing with a different set of of 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.800 of of goals. Yeah, that parallels are there, right, I mean, 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.000 because there's a certain kind of intelligence that that happens 0:06:57.400 --> 0:06:59.360 when you put a group of people together. I mean 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.240 that come up with solutions that you might not have 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.360 come up with yourself, or that people collaborate on and 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.520 all of a sudden, you've you've created a thing, right now. 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:11.480 Other items on Steve Johnson's list a local focus, even 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.640 if the effects are more widespread. So like the local 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:18.200 focus of of a corporation might be just to you know, 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.720 you may just boil it down to making money or 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:22.600 you know, or getting uh you know, or if it's 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:25.120 like a nonprofit, it might be to you know, to 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.480 bring about a certain social change, or to get certain 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.720 legislature passed. In the in the event of a protest, 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:34.040 it may be to alsta a particular individual or to 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:42.280 or to oppose a particular unpopular um law or ruling. Um. 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.440 Then another item on this list is random interactions between 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:50.200 groups and individuals outside. Uh so this is necessary for 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.920 a learning process. You know. It's it's like the mob pushing. 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.760 It's like you know, any kind of scene where it's 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.320 like the man with his police and his and his 0:07:59.480 --> 0:08:01.640 riot shield olds on one side, it's the protesters on 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:03.960 the other, and there's like a there's kind of a push. 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:06.679 There's a testing of the of the two sides. As 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.440 as the mob is is learning, it's seeing what it 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.640 can it can get away with, what it can do, Yeah, 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:16.800 learning what his boundaries are. And um, you know there's 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.720 some there's so many people on the lookout and they're 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:22.000 all gathering data and pulling it in one way or another. Right, 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.040 which is the same thing if you look at and 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.400 some with some insects, with some species that they're all 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.480 kind of like ants, for instance, they're communicating with pheromones, right, 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.120 and they're basically they're saying, Okay, hey, I'm going to 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:37.520 leave this chemical trail to this food source that I 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:39.960 just found. And then all of a sudden, you've got 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:45.520 one ant following that, five ants, ten ants, a thousand ants. 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:48.520 And that's how you're getting this sort of group movement 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.560 toward that food source or the bara metric pressure drops 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.040 for instance, and the ants start building these little sand 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.920 turrets to protect themselves from what they think maybe rain 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:03.960 in pretty soon. So again, it's that collective information and 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.080 sharing of it and this self directing movement that comes 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:10.559 out of it that's so fascinating. Yeah, with ants, it's 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.720 important to note and just to remind everybody, they're they're 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:18.240 like twelve thousand uh known ant species. They've been ruling 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:20.319 the earth for about a hundred and forty million years 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.240 and uh. And while an ant colony or or or 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:27.199 even like a bee hive will have a queen, these 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:31.120 are not rulers. Like the queen plays an important reproductive 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.120 role in a in a in a hive or colony, 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:36.320 but they're not calling the shots. Now. She's just a 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.199 cog in the wheel. Right. Yeah, we we label them 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:43.520 a queen and that comes with certain certain anthropomorphic baggage. 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.400 But just leave that baggage behind, because the queen is 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:51.040 just there to to pump out more more bees or ants. Right, 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.560 that were just that they she's just useful her for 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:55.760 her ovaries. Really to throw it down to that and 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.439 that's true of all these species, right, the insects species 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.400 that that show emergence. Yeah, there's no one leader, there's 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.200 no boss. Yeah. She's not saying, hey, I've got an 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:06.680 idea how to solve this problem about food foraging. No, 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.240 it's it's it's emerging from the the the interactions of 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.040 the group as it pushes against outside stimuli and what 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.280 the group needs. Yeah, there's an interesting study from US 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:22.080 Stanford University's Deborah Gordon. Uh and uh this dealt with 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.120 with the with particularly with forager ants and figuring the 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.880 ant colony, figuring out how many foragers it needs to 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.560 send out. Um. And they found that it came down 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:36.040 interactions between foragers and patrollers. So when a forager has 0:10:36.320 --> 0:10:41.120 contact with patroller you know looking around, um that they 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.800 end up passing on these these pheromones. But a forager 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:48.360 needs several contacts no more than like ten seconds apart 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:50.080 before it'll go out. So there has to be like 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.000 it's it's like a very simple like you know, uh 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:55.120 here here the patrollers coming in, patrollers coming in, and 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:57.120 once it like counts off enough pheromones within a certain 0:10:57.120 --> 0:10:58.959 amount of time, then it knows Oh I need to 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.560 go out and collect Okay. So it's sort of like, again, 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:03.800 is that mass movement? Right? So once it starts to 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:07.280 accumulate all that data from ten of those and it says, okay, 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:09.959 that's the direction I need to go in. Yeah. That 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.040 They concluded that forgers use the rate of their encounters 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:16.520 with patrollers to tell if it's safe to go out. Okay, 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:18.720 so you know, in case there's like an ant eater 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:21.360 out there just gobbling up everything, they won't just blindly 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.240 march out into the mall. You know, there's something altruistic 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:28.559 about that. It seems you know, again that's that's anthropomorphis 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.240 morphosizing this. But it does seem like, okay, well I've 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.040 got your back here, or you know, or I may 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.600 even die for the cause as I'm patrolling. Yeah, And it's, uh, 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.040 that was so romantic. I can't have much. It's hard 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:51.080 not to get romantic about it. This presentation is brought 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:59.040 to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. Another really interesting 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.360 part of all this is that but we've been able 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:04.800 to to look at some of these systems and learn 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:07.960 from them and apply them to, uh, to our own 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:14.120 human systems, our own um transportation or delivery UM systems 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:18.280 such as UH. There's an industrial medical gas guru by 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.719 the name of air Liquid and they worked with an 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.960 AI form firm to develop a computer model based on 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.680 algorithms that were inspired by the forging behavior of argentine ants. 0:12:30.240 --> 0:12:32.320 And this is again the species that we're talking about, 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:36.760 the deposits chemical pheromones um and and uses that to dictate, 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:38.880 you know, how much how many forgers need to go 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.840 out to get the food. So air Liquid is able 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.600 to combine the and the ant approach with other artificial 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.800 intelligence techniques, throw in data about like the weather, customer 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:49.719 demand and all, and they use that to figure out 0:12:49.760 --> 0:12:51.959 how much how much of their product they need to 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:53.960 actually ship out. Okay, and this is based on the 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.520 algorithms that they observed. Yeah, okay, based on algorithm on 0:12:57.600 --> 0:12:59.400 the on the way the ants are handling their problem, 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.360 and they're able to up with a way to to 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:06.200 handle their uh, their distributing needs. UM. And you've heard 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:09.280 of void technology before too, which is sort of similar 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:14.040 in that UM BOYD boy. This is bo I D 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.080 B o I D, which I guess that's sort of 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:22.000 a void pronunciation of bird, right, And this is Craig 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.199 Reynolds who created UM, an artificial life program, and this 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:29.960 is a distributed behavioral model to simulate the motion of 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.080 a flock of birds on a computer. So same thing, right, 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:36.400 and nowther space goes back to the the really central 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:42.640 human need to make believable batswarms in the movie Batman. Yes, yeah, 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:44.640 actually you're right. I mean that that wasn't why he 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.480 actually created this UH technology, but that's one of the 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.120 uses for it. Was c G I s to to 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:54.160 simulate something that looked realistic in terms of a flock 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:58.520 of bats UM. But what he observed is that each 0:13:58.559 --> 0:14:02.040 boid is implemented as an agent and moves according to 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:04.640 its own understanding of the changing environment. So think about 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:08.560 bird formations like V formations UM. There are four rules 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:12.320 with this. First, a boid must move away from other 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.160 boyds they're too close stuff because you don't want to 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.480 applyde Second, they have to fly in a general direction 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.240 that the flock is moving, okay. Third, they need to 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.200 minimize their exposure to flox exterior by moving towards the 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:25.560 perceived centers, which is interesting if you think about that 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:27.840 V formation. I like how your use of BOYD has 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.040 made you pronounced toward more toward. Of course, that's why 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:33.160 he came up with his name. He's like, this is 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.680 totally going to screw the podcasters in the future. I'm 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:37.480 just I'm taking the spirit of it, you know, I'm 0:14:37.560 --> 0:14:40.360 running with it. UM. And then fourth, a boyd should 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:43.040 move laterally away from any boy that blocks its view. 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.280 So I mean that's very simple, right, taking the forcible 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.800 rules in creating UM. This this algorithm UM that has 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.680 also been used by Southwest Airlines. Uh, They've got a 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.880 routing system that in which the pilots try to find 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:01.520 the best airport gate based on the group information coming in. 0:15:01.640 --> 0:15:04.280 So again you've got the group intelligence aspect of it. Yeah. 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.080 It's kind of like ants figuring out which entrigued is 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:10.080 the colony to take when returning home. Yeah. Yeah, And 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.520 it's a little bit scary with with you know, with 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.200 the plane, just because you think, okay, I'm relying on 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.480 the group intelligence for this, But over and over again, 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.200 there's so many different studies and counting jelly beans, you know, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.840 guessing the weight of something. Yeah, like the just the 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:26.680 basic like second third grade activity of getting all the 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.640 kids to to guess the jelly bean number. And then 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:31.880 everybody comes up with these totals, and some kids maybe 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:34.440 way out, some kids don't know what numbers are, and 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:37.680 they're like, you know, drawing a cat on the ballot. 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:39.440 But but when you put them all together and you 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.880 you get you get an average. You can estimate estimate 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:44.160 more or less exactly how many there are in there. 0:15:44.320 --> 0:15:46.880 The mean of right, the mean of that the group 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:50.920 estimate is always closer or the closest to what it 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:53.600 actually is, which is astounding. The main key here is 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.120 that you want a diverse members, you want independent minded members, 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:00.200 and you want a mechanism of voting or averaging to 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.520 figure out how it works. Right. Okay, you don't want 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:05.080 like fifty engineers all in the same room, right, I 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.320 mean you actually want it to be a diverse population 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.600 of people. Um. I mean, you could have fifty engineers 0:16:10.600 --> 0:16:12.920 in a room. But the point is is that it 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:15.840 doesn't it doesn't really matter. You have people from all 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:21.440 social all sort of so so economic strata um giving 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.240 their information, and the mean will always be more accurate. 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:27.560 It's kind of like the whole how many blank does 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.200 it take to fill in a light bulb? You know? 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:32.720 Because I mean it's always a joke about like how 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:35.960 many you know, how many hipsters, how many mechanics, how 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:39.200 many you know blondes or whatever? Um, you know, does 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.160 it take? And it's kind of the message is kind 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:42.760 of if you get all, if you don't have a 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.200 diverse group, they're not going to be able to fulfill 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:48.720 even a simple task to the best of their ability. 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:52.960 But if it were a priest, a rabbi, and uh 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.720 whatever the third one is, then hey, they were an engineer, 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:58.320 an engineer, then they'd have that light screwed in no time. 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:00.920 That's right. Yeah, it takes up the logic. I guess 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.040 it's the point of all emergence here. Um, I mean 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.400 it really is. It's like it's such a simple construct, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:08.440 but it really has changed the way that we think 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.520 about intelligence and the way that we operate in our 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:15.919 own society and uh, the sort of meaning that we 0:17:15.960 --> 0:17:22.399 ascribe to CEOs or kings or presidents. Um, if we 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:28.359 all are essentially self organizing, uh like ants, then and 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.280 we don't necessarily need a leader, and of course we 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:34.560 need it like psychologically. Right, Um, we're still gonna be 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:38.760 okay because we're gonna still come out in theory, um 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.360 with something that makes sense for our community, right because 0:17:42.400 --> 0:17:45.960 we're gonna be acting in our best interests. There's along 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:47.880 those those lines and kind of taking him to a 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.000 slightly more troublesome territory. Um, there's the guy, a guy 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.120 by the name of John Robb. He wrote a book 0:17:54.160 --> 0:17:56.760 called The Brave New War, and he has a really 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:01.080 cool blog called Global Guerrillas. And he made an interesting 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.480 point where he pointed to the insurgency in a rack 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:08.720 in Iraq is a kind of emergence intelligence, uh, he said. Quote. 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.520 He talked about it as quote a complex series of 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.600 local interactions that leads to shifts in its behavior that 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.920 reflect a complex learning goal attainment and self preservation despite 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.000 a lack of a leadership hierarchy. Uh And and he 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:26.560 boils this down into three like key facts about the 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:30.120 insurgency in I rock that one the insurgency will continue 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:34.160 to improve over time to breakout as possible, and three 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.920 that it is impossible to discern the motives of this movement. 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.040 So uh, I found that interesting commentary, you know, because 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.600 it's it's the idea that you're not you're not fighting 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.439 a single individual that as much as is everyone like 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.480 to you know, believe it's like, all right, this this guy, 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.679 let's find him, uh kill him or or you know, 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:55.280 overthrow him, and it's then it's done. But no, you're 0:18:55.280 --> 0:18:57.200 dealing with a I mean, ay, you're dealing with a 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:01.720 far more complicated social and political situation. But also you're 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:05.359 you're dealing with a movement that doesn't doesn't have a leader. 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.399 That's uh, it's you're dealing with the emergence intelligence. And 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:10.679 again it's how do you figure out what that wants? 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.159 And is the second point to break out is that 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:15.520 the aspect of almost like when with a bird flock, 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:17.800 where it all of a sudden it changes direction and 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:20.840 then you know, we maybe have the movement of several 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.600 birds and then that prompts um the other ones to 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:27.159 sort of follow domino like yeah, or like with you know, 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.280 sometimes you'll have like whales that will watch upon the 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:32.760 beach because one has kind of like had gone has 0:19:32.800 --> 0:19:38.879 gone haywire, and the others just follow. UM. This technology 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.720 is also being used with robots of course, right right, 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:46.879 artificial intelligence. UM. It's based on the collective behavior again 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:50.800 of decentralized self organized systems. Just to throw that out 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:55.320 there again and again it's identifying best solutions and communicating them. 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.479 So they're they're hoping to have this same sort of 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:01.160 behavior in robots UM, and how it could be applied 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:05.679 is that you could use something called morphogen morphogenesis UH 0:20:05.760 --> 0:20:08.320 to create a group of robots that can reconfigure and 0:20:08.400 --> 0:20:11.560 undertake different functions. For instance, you could have a group 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.560 of ten robots that may communicate among each other by 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.679 admitting different color lights, and that light it's say if 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.719 it's green and blue, could mean that the other robots 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:23.680 need to attach to each other and create some sort 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.719 of formation. And the formation could be to traverse some 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:29.919 sort of gap in the landscape if that's what the 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.800 robots were doing, or could become up exactly, it becomes 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:36.680 a stack up on each other UM, or it could 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.280 be used to form a shovel shape to push a 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.320 heavy object. So they're trying to use again that swarm 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:47.679 technology there. But more interestingly I think that UM in Georgia, 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:49.880 at Georgia Tech of course, where they're doing tons of 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:54.920 crazy stuff with robots and creating robot armies. UM they've 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.520 developed palm sized robots to use in combat zones, and 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:01.119 they're smart enough to go up on their own and 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:03.399 alert you when they find something. So they're trying to 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:06.240 figure out how best to have these bots interact with 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.639 each other, and right now it's looking like the research 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.400 is favoring a decentralized approach in which the individual robots 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.720 would share information among their companions to form a more 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:21.280 complete picture. So what are we talking about here? Emergence intelligence? Right? Yeah, 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:26.920 so I mean here you go again, robots, emergence intelligence, intelligence, 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:31.280 emergence intelligence, military intelligence. I guess you could say that. Yeah. Yeah, 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:35.960 So you know, anytime we talk about robots, which I 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.000 know we've been doing a lot lately, we we sort 0:21:38.040 --> 0:21:40.120 of get a little bit depressed because we think, oh god, 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:42.960