Alex Pentland

How to build a flourishing society by using what we know about human nature to design our technology rather than let technology shape our society. In Shared Wisdom, Alex Pentland delves into the history of innovation, emphasizing the importance of understanding how technologies and cultural inventions impact human society. Humanity s great leaps forward the rise of civilizations, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution were all propelled by cultural inventions that accelerated our rate of innovation and built collective wisdom. Solving current global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and failing social institutions will require similarly fundamental inventions. Shared Wisdom provides a unique perspective on human society and offers insights into how we can use technologies like digital media and AI to aid, rather than replace, our human capacity for deliberation. Drawing on his expertise in both social science and technology, the author bridges the gap between these two disciplines and offers a holistic view of the challenges and opportunities we face in the age of AI. By looking deep into our history, Pentland argues that the better we understand the key factors that accelerate cultural evolution, the greater our chances of surmounting our current problems.

How the global financial services sector has been transformed by artificial intelligence, data science, and blockchain. Artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and other new technologies have upended the global financial services sector, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporate innovators. Venture capitalists have helped to fund this disruption, pouring nearly $500 billion into fintech over the last five years. This book offers global perspectives on technology-fueled transformations in financial services, with contributions from a wide-ranging group of academics, industry professionals, former government officials, and current government advisors. They examine not only the struggles of rich countries to bring the old analog world into the new digital one but also the opportunities for developing countries to "leapfrog" directly into digital. The book offers accessible explanations of blockchain and distributed ledger technology and explores big data analytics. It considers, among other things, open banking, platform-based strategies for banks, and digital financial services. Case studies imagine possible future fintech-government interaction, emphasizing that legal and regulatory frameworks can help to create trust in financial processes. The contributors offer novel takes and unexpected insights that will be of interest to fintech experts and nonexperts alike. ContributorsAjay Bhalla, Michelle Chivunga, John D'Agostino, Mark Flood, Amias Moore Gerety, Oliver R. Goodenough, Thomas Hardjono, Sharmila Kassam, Boris Khentov, Alexander Lipton, Lev Menand, Pinar Ozcan, Alex Pentland, Matthew Reed, David L. Shrier, Markos Zachariadis

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theory and tools needed for the development of an efficient and robust infrastructure for the design of collaborative patrolling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, focusing on its applications for tactical intelligence drones. It discusses frameworks for robustly and near-optimally analyzing flocks of semi-autonomous vehicles designed to efficiently perform the ongoing dynamic patrolling and scanning of pre-defined “search regions”. It discusses the theoretical limitations of such systems, as well as the trade-offs between the systems’ various economic and operational parameters. Current UAV systems rely mainly on human operators for the design and adaptation of drones’ flying routes. However, recent technological advances have introduced new systems, comprised of a small number of self-organizing vehicles, manually guided at the swarm level by a human operator. With the growing complexity of such man-supervised architectures, it is becoming increasingly harder to guarantee a pre-defined level of performance. The use of large scale swarms of UAVs as a combat and reconnaissance platform therefore necessitates the development of an efficient optimization mechanism of their utilization, specifically in the design and maintenance of their patrolling routes. The book is intended for researchers and engineers in the fields of swarms systems and autonomous drones.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the theory and tools needed for the development of an efficient and robust infrastructure for the design of collaborative patrolling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, focusing on its applications for tactical intelligence drones. It discusses frameworks for robustly and near-optimally analyzing flocks of semi-autonomous vehicles designed to efficiently perform the ongoing dynamic patrolling and scanning of pre-defined “search regions”. It discusses the theoretical limitations of such systems, as well as the trade-offs between the systems’ various economic and operational parameters. Current UAV systems rely mainly on human operators for the design and adaptation of drones’ flying routes. However, recent technological advances have introduced new systems, comprised of a small number of self-organizing vehicles, manually guided at the swarm level by a human operator. With the growing complexity of such man-supervised architectures, it is becoming increasingly harder to guarantee a pre-defined level of performance. The use of large scale swarms of UAVs as a combat and reconnaissance platform therefore necessitates the development of an efficient optimization mechanism of their utilization, specifically in the design and maintenance of their patrolling routes. The book is intended for researchers and engineers in the fields of swarms systems and autonomous drones.

From one of the world's leading data scientists, a landmark tour of the new science of idea flow, offering revolutionary insights into the mysteries of collective intelligence and social influence If the Big Data revolution has a presiding genius, it is MIT's Alex "Sandy" Pentland. Over years of groundbreaking experiments, he has distilled remarkable discoveries significant enough to become the bedrock of a whole new scientific field: social physics. Humans have more in common with bees than we like to admit: We're social creatures first and foremost. Our most important habits of action--and most basic notions of common sense--are wired into us through our coordination in social groups. Social physics is about idea flow, the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviors. Thanks to the millions of digital bread crumbs people leave behind via smartphones, GPS devices, and the Internet, the amount of new information we have about human activity is truly profound. Until now, sociologists have depended on limited data sets and surveys that tell us how people say they think and behave, rather than what they actually do. As a result, we've been stuck with the same stale social structures--classes, markets--and a focus on individual actors, data snapshots, and steady states. Pentland shows that, in fact, humans respond much more powerfully to social incentives that involve rewarding others and strengthening the ties that bind than incentives that involve only their own economic self-interest. Pentland and his teams have found that they can study patterns of information exchange in a social network without any knowledge of the actual content of the information and predict with stunning accuracy how productive and effective that network is, whether it's a business or an entire city. We can maximize a group's collective intelligence to improve performance and use social incentives to create new organizations and guide them through disruptive change in a way that maximizes the good. At every level of interaction, from small groups to large cities, social networks can be tuned to increase exploration and engagement, thus vastly improving idea flow. Social Physics will change the way we think about how we learn and how our social groups work--and can be made to work better, at every level of society. Pentland leads readers to the edge of the most important revolution in the study of social behavior in a generation, an entirely new way to look at life itself.

Big Datan eli suuraineiston aikakausi on avannut uusia mahdollisuuksia tutkia ihmisen ja ihmisjoukkojen käyttäytymistä. Perinteisissä sosiaalitieteissä tutkitaan muutamia kymmeniä tai satoja ihmisiä tiettynä ajanhetkenä, mutta matkapuhelinten ja muunlaisten välineiden avulla aineistoa saadaan reaaliajassa mielivaltaisen suuresta ihmisjoukosta. Havaintoja on miljoonia ja jopa miljardeja ja niistä saadaan uudenlainen käsitys sosiaalisen ympäristön tapahtumista. Tämän aineiston tutkimiseksi on syntynyt uusi tieteenala: sosiaalifysiikka. Suuraineiston ansiosta perinteiset sosiaalitieteiden rakenteet, esimerkiksi yhteiskuntaluokat ja markkinat ovat sosiaalifysiikassa vanhentuneita ja liian epätarkkoja. Tässä teoksessa MIT-yliopiston Media Labissa työskentelevä Alex Pentland esittele sosiaalifysiikan ja sen ensimmäisiä, ennakoimattomia, yllättäviä tuloksia. Sosiaalifysiikka muuttaa tapaamme ajatella sosiaalisia ryhmiä ja niiden vuorovaikutuksia.

How understanding the signaling within social networks can change the way we make decisions, work with others, and manage organizations. How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Alex Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based "honest signaling," evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates. Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge-a "sociometer"-to monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly influences major decisions in our lives-even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by "reading" our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this "network intelligence" theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators.

This is the Spanish translation of "Honest signals", by Alex Pentland. Los grupos de animales toman decisiones conjuntas, comunic ndose entre ellos mucha informaci n por medio de actitudes, sonidos, gestos... cuando los humanos evolucionamos hasta emplear el lenguaje para compartir informaci n, este otro sistema de comunicaci n social no desapareci . Las investigaciones del profesor Pentland demuestran no solo su existencia, sino tambi n que este tipo de informaci n tiene tanto valor para nosotros que incluso prevalece sobre la informaci n ling stica, aunque no seamos conscientes de ella. Este libro cuenta c mo el MIT ha desarrollado herramientas y m todos para medir estas se ales y convertirlas en informaci n manejable. Con ella pueden establecerse patrones de comportamiento y predecirse conductas individuales y de grupos. Se ales honestas es el resultado de una disciplina nueva y emergente, llamada ciencia de las redes, que intenta entender a las personas en el contexto de sus redes sociales en lugar de considerarlas como individuos aislados. Tal vez la consciencia no sea tan importante como tendemos a creer. Quiz necesitemos reexaminar nuestras suposiciones sobre el rol que juegan tanto las fuerzas conscientes como las inconscientes en la configuraci n de nuestras conductas cotidianas. La informaci n de nuestros soci metros apoya la idea de que gran parte de la conducta humana es autom tica o est determinada por procesos inconscientes.