Now, We Can Automate Our Stupid Corporate Opinons

SRI, mentioned below as leaving a bunch of equipment around an old tracking station in Homer, is up to some interesting things these days as a defense research contractor, such as this system for structured argumentation, with the potential for automation.

It is, basically, an Argument machine.


The survival of an enterprise often rests upon its ability to make correct and timely decisions, despite the complexity and uncertainty of the environment. Because of the difficulty of employing formal methods in this context, decision makers typically resort to informal methods, sacrificing structure and rigor. We have developed a new methodology that retains the ease-of-use, familiarity, and (some of) the free-form nature of informal methods, while benefiting from the rigor, structure, and potential for automation characteristic of formal methods. Our approach aims to foster thoughtful and timely analysis through the introduction of structure, and collaboration through access to the corporate memory of current and past analytic results.