Those who consider the rules of cooperation one of the key factors in social development.
Those who seek not only to resolve individual difficulties in working together, but also to improve the mechanisms of cooperation — by exploring, developing and testing new approaches.
ObliNet is an infrastructure for cooperation that we are designing, intended to help independent participants find acceptable terms for joint activity, agree and fulfil interconnected commitments, verify shared results and, drawing on that experience, jointly improve the way their interaction is organised.
AI helps identify problems and new opportunities, analyse causes, and develop and test possible changes. Decisions, authority and responsibility remain with people and the institutions they create.
People, teams and organizations have different interests, capabilities and constraints. In joint activity, they undertake interdependent commitments: what some do affects the work of others and the shared result.
We research how to support participants in aligning their interests, capabilities and commitments, so they can find mutually acceptable solutions and work effectively together.
Even extensive experience does not always lead to better ways of cooperating. The same difficulties can recur despite participants’ competence and efforts.
We study how to use experience from joint activity and AI’s intellectual capabilities to identify strengths and weaknesses in existing rules, discover new opportunities, and develop, agree on and test new rules of cooperation.
Proposed changes must be agreed by the participants concerned, tested and approved in accordance with the allocation of authority.
AI helps analyze experience, identify problems and possible solutions, and assess potential changes. Decisions, authority and responsibility remain with people and the institutions they create.
ObliNet investigates whether participants in a shared activity can maintain a common map of interdependent agreements and commitments. Such a map should show not only who committed to deliver what to whom, but also how agreements depend on one another and what may follow when a condition changes.
Cooperation also depends on participants’ goals, values, capabilities, expectations, beliefs and inner state. We therefore study both the external arrangements for joint work and people’s capacity to make and carry out decisions deliberately.
The aim is to help participants improve not only individual agreements, but the system of cooperation itself.
ObliNet envisages using AI’s intellectual capabilities to identify problems and new opportunities for cooperation, analyse causes, and prepare decisions and recommendations for improving the rules of interaction.
ObliNet is not a separate AI, however. It is an infrastructure for cooperation that we are designing, based on shared rules that people, organisations and different AI systems could apply.
AI helps analyse and propose. Participants agree, make decisions and take responsibility.
Developing and testing this approach requires different perspectives, experience of joint activity and constructive criticism. We invite interested people and organisations to discuss challenges, propose situations and help prepare research.
Researcher, inventor, author of the “Social Synergy” concept, my friend and colleague.
Sergey Surenovich Lachinyan devoted much of his life to finding ways for people to join forces while retaining their autonomy, freedom of thought and responsibility.
Together, we tried to find a practical solution to this challenge — and encountered the very difficulties in mutual understanding and organising collaboration that we sought to overcome.
His ideas, our joint work and the experience we gained became an important part of ObliNet’s history. Today, with new possibilities offered by AI, I continue that search.
I dedicate this work to Sergey’s memory — a person whose ideas and pursuit of constructive collaboration continue to inspire me.
Alexander Rozenzhak
More about Sergey Lachinyan, his ideas and our work together →