Using AI to enhance collective intelligence in virtual teams: augmenting cognition with technology to help teams adapt to complexity

The internet has enabled an increasing amount of collaboration to occur via virtual teamwork, including more complex forms where individuals are working on multiple teams simultaneously. We argue that the environmental complexity teams face requires they be designed for collective intelligence, a capability enabling groups to accomplish goals across a wide range of environments. We describe the transactive systems model of collective intelligence, which articulates how individual memory, attention and reasoning give rise to the emergence and mutual adaptation of the transactive memory, attention, and reasoning processes underlying collective intelligence. Furthermore, as artificial intelligence develops more capabilities to facilitate human interaction, we see how it might augment human cognition in ways that will enhance collective intelligence. Developing trust in AI will be essential for enabling higher levels of collective intelligence with tremendous benefits for organizations and society.