Zocalo in use at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence

Chris Hibbert August 29th, 2008

A few months ago I announced that my work on the Zocalo open source Prediction Market project is being supported by consulting contracts with two universities, but was unable to name the second one. I’m pleased to publicly announce that I’ve been working with Tom Malone of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence. Tom has been working in market-based systems for quite some time, going back to an agoric task-scheduling system called Enterprise that he described in Bernardo Huberman’s “Ecology of Computation”. He’s been promoting prediction markets for several years as well, including in his book The Future of Work.

Zocalo is playing a key role at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence, where they are investigating a variety of approaches to connect people and computers so that—collectively—they act more intelligently. We’re integrating independent agents into prediction markets with human participants to see what subject areas and what market mechanisms lead to markets in which both people and autonomous software contribute to improved predictions. The project involves several professors from the Sloan School, the Media lab, Cognitive Science, CSAIL, and a knowledgable and capable group of grad students and undergrads. The local Boston press got wind of some of the experiments and wrote it up.

The project is sponsored by MIT with funding from Lincoln Laboratory and the Air Force. No official endorsement from those organizations should be inferred.

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Comments(5)

5 Responses to “Zocalo in use at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence”

# Chris F. Masse on 30 Aug 2008 at 3:31 am

Excellent.
# Mike Linksvayer on 30 Aug 2008 at 8:09 pm

Congratulations!

Side note, the following paragraph from the Boston Phoenix article linked above is pretty mixed up:

The theoretical forecast models used by collective-intelligence experts are sometimes called “prediction markets” — a set of algorithms, for example, based on past performance, by which a computer might predict air-travel volume. (In nearly every election when they’ve been used, prediction markets have been more accurate than polls.)
# Chris F. Masse on 31 Aug 2008 at 3:36 am

The journalist writing for the Boston Phoenix got things mixed up badly.
They should interview Chris Hibbert directly.
# Jason Carveron 02 Sep 2008 at 8:26 pm

Congrats Chris on finally being able to talk about the CCI project! Hope all’s going well.

Yeah, I was disappointed with the prediction market description, too. I thought Neely had picked up a better understanding of PMs vs predictive algorithms than that. Hopefully continuing coverage of the CCI research can correct the mistakes.
# David Pennock on 03 Sep 2008 at 5:27 pm

Great news! Thanks and congrats.