Social Influence and the Emergence of Collective Intelligence in Pigeon Flocks

Explore groundbreaking research on collective intelligence in a 40-minute lecture examining how homing pigeon flocks demonstrate enhanced decision-making capabilities. Delve into the mechanisms behind collective intelligence through empirical research findings from 2017 that revealed pigeon flocks, arranged in a "telephone" game-like structure, discovered faster routes home compared to control groups. Learn about the simulation of various strategies pigeons use to combine individual preferences into consensus decisions, focusing on the specific approach that successfully reproduces empirical data. Understand the development of a generic model explaining how social influence strategies correlate with collective intelligence, and discover new predictions about information propagation from individual to collective levels. Presented by Albert Kao from the University of Massachusetts Boston at IPAM's Modeling Multi-Scale Collective Intelligences Workshop, this talk bridges the gap between behavioral biology and collective decision-making theory.