Bring in the Crowds – Advancing Science with Citizens and Machines

ESMT Open Lecture with Henry Sauermann, Professor of Strategy, ESMT Berlin.

Scientists are increasingly involving the general public in research projects, typically in data collection and data analysis. Besides scientific wins, these so-called “crowd science” projects can accomplish other goals, such as increasing scientific literacy and steering science towards pressing public needs.

In this ESMT Open Lecture, Henry Sauermann, professor of strategy, will discuss two frontiers in crowd science. First, Prof. Sauermann will share recent research on how citizens contribute to the formulation of research questions. What do we gain from citizen involvement in conceptual rather than empirical stage of research? Second, Prof. Sauermann will discuss new uses of Artificial Intelligence to complement (and sometimes replace) citizens in crowd science. What are the implications for the scale and efficiency of projects – and for the democratizing potential of crowd science?