The latter half of the 20th century was the “economist’s hour,” according to journalist Binyamin Appelbaum. Equipped with new population-level data and mathematical models, economists shaped policies by offering scientifically testable mechanisms for problem-solving and value creation. Today, as technological and societal disruptions upend established ways of working, it is time to ask: Whose hour is now upon us to utilize collective intelligence?

Many of the toughest challenges facing people and planet—such as those embedded in the world’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—are tough because they are problems that can only be solved together, through cooperation across diverse actors. Ending poverty and hunger or arresting environmental degradation globally demands a paradigm shift in capacities to work collectively within and across communities, sectors, and geographies.

For these issues, the current moment may belong not to a single discipline, such as economics, but to the transdisciplinary science of collective intelligence (CI).

Researchers across biological, behavioral, social, and computer sciences are leveraging advanced tools of the 21st century’s technological revolution—ubiquitous sensors, continuous data streams, and machine learning—to understand how collective behavior underpins life across scales, from multicellular organizations and ant colonies to human teams, organizations, and distributed digital networks. Representing a convergence of these approaches rooted in cognitive psychology, network theory, and computational modeling, CI provides a potentially unifying scientific framework for understanding how to sustain and steward societal and planetary systems.

In a similar way that economics shaped evidence-based policymaking in the 20th century, CI could serve as a scientific engine for identifying which collective approaches to the SDGs are most effective in specific contexts—and why.

In a time of disruptive change, the science of CI can help tackle challenges that can only be solved together.

Roundtable on Utilizing Collective Intelligence to Meet the SDGs

Motivated by this opportunity and building upon initial efforts to elevate CI for the SDGs, a September 2024 Brookings virtual roundtable convened over 40 leading CI researchers and sustainable development practitioners to explore how CI insights could enhance collective problem-solving efforts within and across sustainable development challenges.

Read the full article about collective intelligence by Jacob Taylor at Brookings.