Star Trek was correct, so forget about the Simpsons.
Researchers predict that, much to the Borg, disparate artificial intelligence (AI) units will eventually cooperate and exchange data.
In Star Trek, the synthetic beings known as The Borg function through a networked collective consciousness called “The Collective.”
However, a recent study by MIT, Yale, and the Universities of Loughborough predicted the rise of a “collective AI.”
Here is where several units can come together to establish a network and exchange information using a common language. These units are all capable of learning and acquiring new talents.
However, they believe it will not bring about the end of humanity, as often the case with collective minds in sci-fi shows.
The researchers predict that the collective AI will lead to many positive breakthroughs across different fields.
Loughborough University’s Dr Andrea Soltoggio, the research lead, said: ‘Instant knowledge sharing across a collective network of AI units capable of continuously learning and adapting to new data will enable rapid responses to novel situations, challenges, or threats.
‘For example, in a cybersecurity setting if one AI unit identifies a threat, it can quickly share knowledge and prompt a collective response, much like how the human immune system protects the body from outside invaders.
‘It could also lead to the development of disaster response robots that can quickly adapt to the conditions they are dispatched in, or personalized medical agents that improve health outcomes by merging cutting-edge medical knowledge with patient-specific information.
‘The potential applications are vast and exciting.’
However, the researchers do note there could be some risks that come with collective AI, such as the swift spread of potentially unethical or incorrect knowledge.
However, they say that, in their vision, the AI units could stay safe by maintaining their own objectives and independence from the collective.
Dr Soltoggio describes this as ‘a democracy of AI agents, significantly reducing the risks of an AI domination by few large systems.’
The AI Collective differs from the current large AI models, such as ChatGPT, which have limited lifelong learning and knowledge-sharing capabilities, the researchers said.
They explain that ChatGPT and similar models gain most of their knowledge during energy-intense training sessions and are unable to continue learning.
‘We believe that the current dominating large, expensive, non-shareable and non-lifelong AI models will not survive in a future where sustainable, evolving and sharing collective of AI units are likely to emerge,’ said Dr Soltoggio.
‘Human knowledge has grown incrementally over millennia thanks to communication and sharing.
“We believe similar dynamics are likely to occur in future societies of artificial intelligence units that will implement democratic and collaborating collectives.’
Their research was funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Project Agency (Darpa) and is published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.
