In this clip from the Beauty at Work podcast, Glen Weyl describes what may be the oldest human-made system that resembles a neural network: the 13th-century process used to elect the Doge of Venice.

Weyl is a leading economist and social theorist whose work focuses on democratic design, collective intelligence, and the social foundations of technology. He is the author of Radical Markets and has been a prominent voice in rethinking how economic and technological systems can better serve human flourishing.

In this segment, Weyl explains how the Venetian system involved multiple layers of councils selecting other councils over several rounds, creating a distributed, recombinatory structure strikingly similar to modern neural networks. The example challenges the assumption that collective intelligence or “superintelligence” is a new or alien phenomenon.

Weyl uses this historical analogy to argue that human societies have long built sophisticated systems of shared decision-making and agency. When modern technology forgets these traditions and treats intelligence as a purely abstract or external force, it risks undermining the very cultural foundations that make collective intelligence possible in the first place.

You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/CS9TFn_NpK4

To learn more about Glen you can find him at: https://glenweyl.com/ 

Follow us on social media for more updates:

X: https://x.com/brvnathan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brvnathan/

This episode is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust (https://templetonreligiontrust.org/)

Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BeautyatWorkPodcast

Learn more at www.beautyatwork.net

#GlenWeyl #NeuralNetworks #ArtificialIntelligence #CollectiveIntelligence #HistoryOfAI #AIDemocracy #DogeOfVenice #DistributedSystems #TechnologyAndSociety #BeautyAtWork