Date: October 15, 2009 Instructor: Neil Jacobstein Click to play video.

Description:
This workshop addresses the opportunities and challenges in improving complex decision performance with computing environments designed to enhance decision making. It examines human information processing limitations and cognitive bias, and the software and hardware tools that could be brought to bear systematically to overcome some of these limitations. What prevents us from marshalling all the relevant knowledge available to solve our most pressing and complex problems? What kinds of decision environments have been built so far, and what metrics characterize their strengths and weaknesses? We will review design criteria for augmentation systems envisioned by Doug Engelbart, Stafford Beer, and Buckminster Fuller. How will the rapid growth of web-based data visualization tools, machine inference, argumentation maps, simulation, and social software such as prediction markets alter the possibility of realizing these visions? Participants will match available decision technologies with their own complex problem requirements, and consider how these components can be integrated incrementally to improve decision making in industry and government.

We are experiencing significant performance gaps in complex group decision making at a time when several key technologies and human impacts on the environment are accelerating exponentially. The best group decision making produces decisions that are smarter than the smartest person on a policy or decision making team. High performance technical and business teams exhibit precisely this kind of behavior. However, all too often, group decisions, including policy making, results in decisions that are worse than what could be produced by the least capable member of a group.

What prevents us from marshalling ALL the relevant knowledge available to solve our most pressing and complex problems?
What kinds of decision environments have been built so far, and what metrics characterize their STRENGTHS and WEAKNESSES?
How will the rapid growth of web-based data visualization tools, machine inference, argumentation maps, simulation, and social software such as reputation and prediction markets ALTER THE POSSIBILITY of realizing these visions?

Participants will match available decision technologies with their own complex problem requirements, and consider how these components can be integrated incrementally to improve decision making continuously, however imperfectly, in industry and government.

Audience: Technologists, industry executives, academics, government administrators, and others interested in continuously improving their own decision environments.

Instructor:
Neil Jacobstein is Chairman and CEO of Teknowledge Corporation, a knowledge systems software company that started in 1981 in Palo Alto. He chaired the American Association for Artificial Intelligence’s 17th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence conference in 2005. Jacobstein became a Senior Research Fellow in the Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in 2006, and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Stanford’s Media X Program. He has been Chairman of the 501c3 Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) since 1992. He is the principal co-author of the Foresight Guidelines for the responsible development of molecular nanotechnology, and has given technical and public interest talks worldwide on the future of nanotechnology. In 1999, Jacobstein was selected as an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow. He received his BS in Environmental Sciences, Summa cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin, and an MS in Human Ecology and Community Health Sciences from the University of Texas, in conjunction with an environmental simulation program at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Jacobstein was a Graduate Research Intern in the Learning Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and a consultant in PARC's Software Concepts Group. He spent four years doing renewable energy and environmental research as a Research Associate at the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. Jacobstein has served on the Technology Advisory Board for the U.S. Army’s Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command, and a variety of industry and nonprofit advisory boards. He has given seven Aspen Institute Socrates Seminars on the opportunities and risks of future technologies. He is a member of Business Executives for National Security, as well as AAAS, AAAI, IEEE, and ACM.

Audience: Technologists, industry executives, academics, government administrators, and others interested in continuously improving their own decision environments.

Workshop Fees:
The cost includes all materials, breakfasts, coffee breaks, and snacks.

Register Now: please go to the registration page and use the code OPEN

Or use the registration code provided to you.

Registration and Refund Policies:
If there are insufficient registrations received before September 15, 2009, we reserve the right to cancel the workshops and refund your registration fees in full. We will NOT be liable for the cost of travel or hotel reservations. Please contact information for advice on the possibility of cancellation.

STAP funds may be used for this workshop.

*Preliminary description. Subject to change.