  Collective Intelligence (CI) is the ability of a group to exhibit greater
intelligence than its individual members. Expressed by the common saying that
"two minds are better than one," CI has been a topic of interest for social
psychology and the information sciences. Computer mediation adds a new element
in the form of distributed networks and group support systems. These facilitate
highly organized group activities that were all but impossible before computer
mediation. This paper presents experimental findings on group problem solving
where a distributed software system automatically integrates input from many
humans. In order to quantify Collective Intelligence, we compare the
performance of groups to individuals when solving a mathematically formalized
problem. This study shows that groups can outperform individuals on difficult
but not easy problems, though groups are slower to produce solutions. The
subjects are 57 university students. The task is the 8-Puzzle sliding tile
game.
