NC State University

Department of Computer Science Colloquia 2000-2001


Date: Thursday, February 15, 2001
Time:   3:30 P.M. (Talk)
Place: Withers 402-A, NCSU Historical Campus (click for courtesy parking request)

Speaker: Jon Doyle, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

Steps Toward a Qualitative Decision Theory

Abstract:  The standard quantitative theory of rational choice serves as a solid and productive basis for economic theory and for making complex decisions in finance, medicine, and public policy.Ý Automating decision making in autonomous and assistive agents requires extending traditional decision-theoretic concepts with qualitative concepts that better serve the added needs of reasoning, representation, and adaptation.ÝWe illustrate these needs in the domain of computer security, examine several contributions to a developing qualitative decision theory, and outline directions for future investigation.

Short Bio:  Dr. Doyle is Principal Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Computer Science of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Ý He earned a bachelors degree from the University of Houston in mathematics, and masters and doctors degrees from MIT in artificial intelligence.Ý Elected Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence in 1991 for his work on truth maintenance, nonmonotonic logic, metareasoning, and the foundations of artificial intelligence, he has held positions at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, served as AAAI Councillor, director of the Knowledge Representation and Reasoning conferences, and associate editor of ACM Computing Surveys and the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.Ý Doyle has published over eighty technical papers and is currently completing two books.Ý His research concerns distributed reasoning and agent technology, qualitative decision theory, and theories of limited rationality, with applications to knowledge-based monitoring, computer security, patient protection and empowerment, and autonomous negotiation.

Hosts: D. Bitzer and M. Singh, Computer Science, NCSU
 

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