Social Machines - 2017 Update (University of Iowa)

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Tetherless World Constellation, RPI

Social Machines:The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking

and HumanityJim Hendler

Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive SciencesDirector, Institute for Data Exploration and Applications

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institutehttp://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler

@jahendler (twitter)


Social Machines … Not!


What is a social machine?

• 3 definitions of “Social Machine”– Cooler name than social media analytics



• 3 definitions of “Social Machine”– Cooler name than social media analytics– Machines increasingly entering our

social sphere

1968 2010 Today



• 3 definitions of “Social Machine”– Cooler name than social media analytics– Machines increasingly entering our

social sphere– Networks of machines supporting

networks of people working together in ways that impact the real world



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

Combination of all three


Social networking consumes huge amountsof human (humanity’s!) time


Time spent online


Time spent online

Economist, 2014


Using this time

Imagine• Hundreds of millions of people• Effectively able to network together• Working with the data archives of science, govts,

NGOs, etc.Working together on the Web

to cure disease, to feed the hungry,and to empower the powerless…

How could we do this?


Idea 1, do this by “accident”

Being explored, but how do we make this purposeful?


Harnessing the power for “fun”

Von Ahn, 06


GWAP (ESP ca. 2006)


Harnessing this power “unknowlingly”

You have likely helped to make Optical Character Recognition better!

Von Ahn et al, 08


Duolingo (2012)


Harnessing human knowledge for problem solving

Raddick et al, 07


Millions of galaxies classified


16: Hanny’s Voorwerp(A digression or maybe the whole point)


The Zooniverse


Social machines for Social Good


Social machines for Social Good


AI and Social Machines


Today: We gain benefit from AI


But, the machines still need us…


But, the machines still need us…


The “AI revolution” needs Social Machines!


Embracing the blur


Embracing the blur


Embracing the blur


Wikipedia needs technology (enabled by humans)

How do you prevent people from ruining articles? (Defacement or vandalism)

Software robots automatically reverse obvious defacement immediately. Moreover, there are hundreds of people who spend a little time each day watching the list of recent changes on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol)... (Wikipedia FAQ, 2010)


Wikipedia Needs humans (enabled by technology)


Studying Social Machines is Inherently Multidisciplinary


Distribution Statement

Wikipedia as Social Mechanism


Distribution Statement

Slashdot (and Reddit) mechanism


Galaxy Zoo communities

Bipana Bantawa, OII


22: Social Challenges include

• Keys to understanding on-line communities include– dynamics of online communities

• Incentives unclear• Information flows between online and offline are largely

unstudied• We can no longer assume an expert -> novice

continuum, but what replaces it?– Trust (and distrust) on Web-based communities

• Goal is to share information, not hide it – but how do we prevent abuses?

• Who do you trust (really)?– Governance is a critical factor

• HFS is “self organizing,” which limits its scale


Example: Governance

• Wikipedia includes a lot of rules and privileged people to adjudicate/enforce them– Study in 2008

(Butler etal, CHI, 08)• 44 policies (now 51)• 248 guidelines (now over 400)


23: Technical Challenges include

• Heavy programming burden– Costs a lot to build/support a scalable, governed

platform• Compare Wikipedia to HFS

– Designing a successful GWAP still a black art• And a large programming challenge

– How can we create tools that a community can use by itself?

• 80% solution for everyone >> 99% for some• Underlying models

– How do we define Social Machines more rigorously?


Engineering challenges

• Creating tools that allow groups of users to create, share and evolve a new generation of open and interacting social machines– Declarative mechanism for sharing– Read/write mechanism for both information and “governance”

• Creating the underlying architectural principles to guide the design and efficient engineering of new Web infrastructure components for this new generation of social software – Distributed, open and dynamic (aka Web-like)

• Creating mechanisms to guarantee that use protocols are explicit and conform to the relevant social policy expectations of the users.– Transparency, accountability, policy awareness


Why this REALLY matters

• Humanity faces huges challenges– eg. Our knowledge of cancer genomics is being

outpaced by mutations as cancer continues to spread

– eg. Healthcare continuing to rise as %age of GDP while cheaper preventive measures remain unused

– eg. Our neighborhoods degrade as wealth disparity grows

– eg. Our climate warms as we argue about the causes without changing behaviors


Attacking these problems require the best minds we have working together: Human and AI!

Social Machines give us an approach to attacking the big problems facing humanity


Social Machines

• We are on developingnew technologies to create Web-based systems that will transform society by:– Creating new systems that allow large numbers of

users to interact over the Web to collectively solve problems.

– Creating and disseminating new Web application development technologies aimed at letting communities build and run their own social machines

• AI may be an important part of this• There are some important examples out there

– But there’s a lot of important science to be done• This is a truly interdisciplinary challenge in which

computing, social science, informatics and communications work is all required

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Social Machines - 2017 Update (University of Iowa)