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Artificial Intelligence
Social Computers help to resolve global social challenges | Permalink Until recently, many critical issues, such as energy sustainability, quality of life and the governance of financial markets, have been managed within the boundaries of nation-states. However, these issues now span a wide range of geographically distant, heterogeneous societies and economies. As such, they have become global challenges, characterized by diversity (as they touch on the interests of diverse stakeholders), complexity (as they involve several intertwined and sometimes controversial aspects) and dynamics (as they evolve rapidly).1 Managing and resolving these issues requires enhanced problem-solving capabilities that are not possessed by any single actor, be it governmental, a worldwide platform for citizen collaboration or an international corporation. Only the interconnection of dispersed entities and knowledge will allow people to tackle the challenges posed by globalization. In this context, pervasive and deeply embedded information and communication technology (ICT) provides the infrastructure for reorganizing society more efficiently in complex networks of real-time communication and coordination. The space of social interactions now becomes one of so-called techno-social systems, in which “infrastructures composed of different technological layers are interoperating within the social component that drives their use and development”.2 Within these systems, the combination of human and computational agencies generates the enhanced capabilities needed in the global era. Here, social computing services and applications favour the creation of knowledge-based communities that can serve the most diverse purposes, from content sharing to profit production.3However, despite attempts to model and predict the behaviour of techno-social systems, we still do not know how to efficiently combine the power of ICT with the knowledge and competences of billions of people worldwide to tackle global societal challenges. Figure 1. Social computers are ‘techno-social’ systems that combine human and computational intelligences to enhance human problem-solving capabilities. 
By critically reflecting on how to meaningfully increase human problem-solving capabilities through socially aware ICT, our departments have engaged in a systematic effort to articulate a new vision for techno-social systems based on a new generation of technologies, which, in turn, will provide the backbone for social progress at the global level. We call these new techno-social systems the Social Computer.4 In a Social Computer, human and computational intelligences are joined together in a symbiotic way to exploit reciprocal potentials and minimize weaknesses (see Figure 1). For example, although ICT has proved successful in overcoming human shortcomings in terms of communicating, computing and sensing, it lacks competences that are typical of humans, such as general problem solving, reasoning and interpreting. These competences are of paramount importance in attempting to manage and resolve global societal challenges. Also, computers are not able to consider social contexts, nor can they properly account for human values such as integrity, privacy, friendship and solidarity, all of which shape the boundaries of social life. Both orders of competences are strictly required to manage and resolve global challenges in all their diversity, dynamics and complexity. The power of the Social Computer resides in the programmable combination of contributions from both humans and computers. On the one hand, within organized social computation workflows, humans bring their competences, knowledge and skills, together with their networks of social relationships and their understanding of social structures. On the other hand, ICT can search for and deliver relevant information. Humans can then use this information within their contexts to achieve their goals and, eventually, to improve the overall environment in which they live. In a Social Computer, the Internet supports the infrastructures within which social interactions and problem-solving activities will be performed according to the deeply interactive norms and patterns that regulate societies. In this way, the multiplicity of stakeholders, perspectives and interests on issues becomes a richness to be exploited in finding innovative and satisfactory solutions. Rapidly evolving challenges can be tackled using flexible, adaptive mechanisms, and the complexity of ties between actors and levels of action is channeled along knowledge and information flows that follow the capillarity of the Internet. Through its twofold nature (technical and social), programming a Social Computer entails both conventional software programming and developing social incentives to motivate people to engage with the system to ensure the continuation of the symbiosis. Moreover, the Social Computer requires much more than the convergence of different branches of computer science and engineering. It presupposes a new science based on the collaboration of computer and social scientists, engineers and humanists to develop truly socially aware technologies.5 References
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