Toward cognitive assistants for complex decision making under uncertainty

Abstract. Discussed in this paper is a quite unique and novel intelligence decision technology resting upon three systems we have called Disciple-LTA [Learning, Teaching and Assistance], TIACRITIS [Training Intelligence Analysts Critical Reasoning Skills], and Disciple-CD [Connecting the Dots]. We have so far applied these systems to complex intelligence inferences based on masses of evidence of many different kinds and coming from many different sources. This paper discusses the extension of these systems to be valuable decision support assistants that are capable of helping analysts to answer the two fundamental questions regarding decisions made in the face of uncertainty: what’s at stake?, and what are the odds? The stakes question concerns the value or utility of decision consequences and the odds question concerns the probability of these possible consequences. We discuss the requisite ingredients of defensible and persuasive decisions and problems associated with the discovery of these ingredients in a world that keeps changing all the time. But we also consider the constraints facing intelligence analysts who so often have limited time for decisions and who also have deficiencies regarding the availability of information supporting requisite value and probability judgments. Conventional approaches to decision analysis are usually not helpful in the face of these constraints. We offer simplified methods for assessing both value and probability judgments and a simplified method for combining these judgments in the selection of a course of action that does take account of the requisites for defensible and persuasive decision and analysis. In the process, we illustrate our methods with a very complex analysis involving the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons.