How To Supercharge Collective Intelligence Using GenAI

Hi friends,

The emergence of Generative AI (GenAI) in an exponential age is pretty controversial. Mention it in any meeting, and you'll invite intrigue, skepticism, and even eye-rolling :)?

Why? One reason is that while GenAI is revolutionizing how we approach problem-solving, we're divided on its role in our future.?

And without a better understanding of its capabilities and limitations, I think we'll always be divided.

This week, I wanted to explore something that’s important to both me as a facilitator and (I believe) to you as a leader: GenAI's potential for boosting collective intelligence.

GenAI: Valuable, Yet Limited

First, let's look at the limitations that differentiate GenAI from human intelligence:

• Contextual Understanding: Despite its confidence, GenAI can't fully grasp the nuanced contexts of our challenges. If you've used it before, you'll already know that it can't read between the lines or understand the unique subtleties of our situations.
• Solution Efficiency: Second, GenAI looks for computationally efficient solutions. That means it sometimes overlooks the complexities that a more thorough exploration might reveal. In contrast, we humans EXCEL at this when we're given the right context for collective intelligence.
• Symbolic Abstraction: While GenAI can navigate semantics pretty well, it struggles with symbolic reasoning, abstraction, and generalization. If you work with tech or complex planning issues, you'll know these are key components of problem-solving.

Then, What Is The Value of GenAI?

In my opinion, the true power of GenAI lies in its potential to supplement and enhance our collective intelligence, particularly in group workshops. We just need to know how to use its full potential in a few key ways.

Here are our goals if we’re aiming to amplify collective intelligence:

1. Amplify Diversity of Thought: We need ways we can use GenAI to introduce a broader array of questions and perspectives, enriching discussions. We want to encourage participants to explore diverse viewpoints, stimulating thorough and nuanced brainstsorming.
2. Design Space Optimization: We need to encourage teammates to view problems through new, creative lenses. For example, using frameworks or insights suggested by GenAI.
3. Facilitate Participative Interactions: If you haven’t heard of multi-agent GenAI systems, these are great ways to simulate dynamic group discussions. By involving teammates with different skill sets, experience, and knowledge, you can use multi-agent GenAI to unlock multifaceted insights and transformative, collectively intelligent ideas.

That’s all well and good, but how do we achieve these goals?

As well as experimenting with a range of GenAI, we must rethink how we interact with our chosen tech.

In a nutshell, we need to be less passive and a whole lot more active.

A Quick Look: Building New Relationships With AI

One of the most effective, practical ways we can apply GenAI to elevate our team’s problem-solving and ideation processes is by building “Question-Asking Machines.”

That means three things, according to AI experts:?

1. Encouraging Critical Engagement: The trick is to approach AI-generated answers with curiosity, and encouraging your chosen tech to challenge your thought process with questions like “What is missing?” or “How might this fail?” AI specialists argue that this is the key to using AI in a way that deepens rather than speeds up analysis.
2. Integrate Logical Thinking Frameworks: This involves familiarizing yourself and your team with logical thinking frameworks, then using GenAI to apply these frameworks to your challenges, as I previously mentioned. For example, you can open up new perspectives and solutions by asking something like, “How would Lencioni’s Pyramid Theory apply here?”.
3. Submitting Work and Soliciting Critique: This means regularly "feeding" your chosen gen AI with your work: sharing your drafts, project plans, or ideas. Then, prompting it to ask clarifying questions, which will both refines your ideas and encourage a culture of continuous improvement and critical thinking in your team.

So, by changing up your interactions with AI, you can make them more active and not just passive, nurturing an environment that’s more conducive to collective intelligence.?

Your goal is (not just) to get answers but to solicit thought-provoking questions that unlock new realms of creativity and problem-solving.

Over To You?

With all this in mind, what are some practical first steps you can take when facilitating your next group workshop?

You might want to consider the following:

• Challenge your participants with unexpected questions. This is how you can foster a dynamic environment where ideation thrives. Use your AI to generate them, and also use them to enliven your group discussions.
• Broaden your potential solutions by applying different logical frameworks to the problem you’re aiming to solve. Do your research on specific theories as a group, or even ask your AI for a starting point for this debate!
• Based on your industry and goals, experiment with different multi-agent AI tech. Remember, you’re looking for an intelligent, synthetic way to facilitate multi-threaded “town hall-type” discussions that will enrich your decision-making and, ultimately, your outcomes.

21st-century leadership is about enhancing collective intelligence by collaborating with emerging technologies. There's no room for fear of what we're not familiar with.

If you've used or thought of ways to amplify your team's collective wisdom and creativity with GenAI, I'd love to hear about it.

Why not send me a DM and we'll have a little chat?

— Govert