Improving human collective decision-making through animal and artificial intelligence

<strong>Whilst fundamental to human societies, </strong><strong>collective decision-making such as </strong><strong>voting systems can lead to </strong><strong>non-efficient </strong><strong>decisions, as past climate policies demonstrate. Current systems are harshly criticized for the way they consider voters’ needs and knowledge. </strong><strong>Collective decision-making </strong><strong>is central in human societies but also occurs in animal groups mostly when animals need to choose when and where to move. In these societies, animals </strong><strong>balance between </strong><strong>the needs of the group members </strong><strong>and their own needs</strong><strong> and rely on </strong><strong>each individual’s (partial) knowledge. We argue that non-human animals and humans share similar collective decision processes, among which are agenda-setting, deliberation and voting.</strong><strong> Recent works in artificial intelligence have sought to improve decision-making in human groups, sometimes inspired by animals’ decision-making systems. We discuss here how our societies could benefit from recent advances in ethology and artificial intelligence to improve our collective decision-making system.</strong>