Twitter committed $10 million to the MIT Media Lab to create a Laboratory for Social Machines that will study social systems, build tools for "social engagement and change," and deploy "social machines — networked human-machine collaboratives."
From MIT's announcement:
Though funded by Twitter, the LSM will have complete operational and academic independence. In keeping with the academic mission of LSM, students and staff will work across many social media and mass media platforms — including, but not limited to, Twitter.
"The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can't be solved manually or through automation alone," says Deb Roy, an associate professor at the Media Lab who will lead the LSM, and who also serves as Twitter's chief media scientist. "Social feedback loops based on analysis of public media and data can be an effective catalyst for increasing accountability and transparency — creating mutual visibility among institutions and individuals."
