CogNarr Ecosystem: Facilitating Group Cognition at Scale

TL;DR

The paper introduces the CogNarr ecosystem, a novel framework inspired by cognitive science and AI to enable effective large-group online cognition, addressing communication and information processing challenges in massive online groups.

Contribution

It presents a new vision for scaling cognitive science and AI principles to facilitate large-group cognition through the CogNarr ecosystem.

Findings

Proposes a cognitive architecture for large-group online interaction

Integrates recent advances in AI and NLP for group cognition

Provides a scalable framework for complex, dynamic group discussions

Abstract

Human groups of all sizes and kinds engage in deliberation, problem solving, strategizing, decision making, and more generally, cognition. Some groups are large, and that setting presents unique challenges. The small-group setting often involves face-to-face dialogue, but group cognition in the large-group setting typically requires some form of online interaction. New approaches are needed to facilitate the kind of rich communication and information processing that are required for effective, functional cognition in the online setting, especially for groups characterized by thousands to millions of participants who wish to share potentially complex, nuanced, and dynamic perspectives. This concept paper proposes the CogNarr (Cognitive Narrative) ecosystem, which is designed to facilitate functional cognition in the large-group setting. The paper's contribution is a novel vision as to how recent developments in cognitive science, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and related fields might be scaled and applied to large-group cognition, using an approach that itself promotes further scientific advancement. A key perspective is to view a group as an organism that uses some form of cognitive architecture to sense the world, process information, remember, learn, predict, make decisions, and adapt to changing conditions. The CogNarr ecosystem is designed to serve as a component within that architecture.