Computer Supported Decision-making as a Means to Facilitate Attaining a State of Well-being
Florin Gheorghe Filip
The Romanian Academy
Abstract
Well-being is the condition of a person (or group of persons) that can be modeled in the terms of system theory as a state vector with several components, such as health condition, prosperity, happiness and so on. Various metrics can be attached to the above components (or characteristic attributes of the entity that represents the well-being). The actual values (or levels) of the attributes are the result of a combined impact of various exogenous and endogenous factors. While the exogenous factors cannot be directly influenced by a person (or a group of people), changing the current values of the state components towards attaining the desired ones can be the result of actions corresponding to suitable individual or group decision-making (GDM)
More than 50 years ago, Douglas Engelbart [1], who is known as the man who devised the mouse, viewed the computer as a tool to “enhance human intellect” in order to solve the problems. Since then, various methodologies and information and communications technology (I&CT) tools have been proposed and released, respectively. Among those tools, artificial intelligence (AI)-based ones have exerted a significant impact on enhancing human capabilities and performances.
In the above described context, the paper addresses the contribution of AI in developing modern computer-based decision support systems (DSS). The papers first review the basic concepts related decision and decision-makers. A particular emphasis is put on collaborative multi-participant/group decision-making activities [2]. Then, as anticipated by Herbert Simon [3], the AI has been ever more used in decision-making. Particular solutions of AI-based DSS are presented including the usage and various evolution stages of advanced [digital] cognitive systems [4]. The limitations and debatable aspects of such systems are eventually reviewed.
Keywords: artificial intelligence, computer-supported collaborative activities, decision support systems (DSS), digital cognitive assistants, human capabilities
Selected References
1. Engelbart DC (1962) Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. SRI
Project 3578
2. Filip FG, Zamfirescu CB, Ciurea C (2017) Computer Supported Collaborative
Decision-making. Springer
3. Simon H (1987) Two heads are better than one; the collaboration between AI and OR.
Interfaces 17(4): 8-15
4. Siddike MAK, Spohrer J, Demirkan H, Kohda J (2018) People's interactions with
cognitive assistants for enhanced performances. In: Proceedings of the 51st Hawaii
International Conference on System Sciences 2018, p 1640-1648
5. Helbing D. et al. (2019) Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?.
In: Helbing D. (ed) Towards Digital Enlightenment. Springer, Cham.