Collective Intelligence plays a central role in a large variety of fields, from economics and evolutionary theory to neural networks and eusocial insects, and it is also core to much of the work on emergence and self-organisation in complex systems theory. However, in human collective intelligence there is still much more to be understood in the relationship between specific psychological processes at the individual level and the emergence of self-organised structures at the social level. Previously psychological factors have played a relatively minor role in the study of collective intelligence as the principles are often quite general and applicable to humans just as readily as insects or other agents without sophisticated psychologies. In this article we emphasise, with examples from other complex adaptive systems, the broad applicability of collective intelligence principles while the mechanisms and time-scales differ significantly between examples. We contend that flexible collective intelligence in human social settings is improved by our use of a specific cognitive tool: our Theory of Mind. We identify several key characteristics of psychologically mediated collective intelligence and show that the development of a Theory of Mind is a crucial factor distinguishing social collective intelligence from general collective intelligence. We then place these capabilities in the context of the next steps in artificial intelligence embedded in a future that includes an effective human-AI hybrid social ecology.

翻译：集体智能在众多领域中扮演着核心角色，从经济学、进化论到神经网络和真社会性昆虫，它也是复杂系统理论中涌现与自组织研究的关键。然而，在人类集体智能中，个体层面的特定心理过程与社会层面自组织结构的涌现之间的关系，仍有大量内容有待阐明。以往心理学因素在集体智能研究中作用相对有限，因为其原理通常具有普适性，不仅适用于人类，也同样适用于昆虫或其他不具备复杂心理的智能体。本文通过其他复杂适应系统的实例，强调集体智能原理的广泛适用性，同时指出不同实例间的机制与时间尺度存在显著差异。我们认为，人类在社会情境中灵活运用一种特定的认知工具——心智理论，从而提升了集体智能的水平。我们识别出心理中介型集体智能的若干关键特征，并论证心智理论的发展是区分社会集体智能与一般集体智能的关键因素。最后，我们将这些能力置于人工智能未来发展的背景下进行探讨，展望其在一个包含高效人机混合社会生态的未来中所扮演的角色。