“Hidden Gem” of Decision Optimization

Jacob Feldman wrote a post about the importance of the Solution Pools called “hidden gems” of optimization solvers. However, they usually require programming expertise, while at decision time, it’s subject matter experts, not programmers, who use already tested and deployed decision models. These business users need to add last-minute constraints on the fly, particularly when there’s no time or technical expertise available to modify the underlying decision model. Jacob asks the question: “How do we unlock this hidden gem and put it in the hands of decision-makers when they need it most?

Today, there’s a growing consensus among optimization experts: constraint and linear/MIP solvers deliver greater real-world value when embedded in modern Decision Intelligence Platforms that seamlessly integrate rule engines, machine learning, and optimization. The logical evolution for Decision Intelligence Platforms is to provide graphical Decision Pools—making Solution Pools accessible to business users. The newest OpenRules Decision Playground brings this vision to life. Link

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The ability to ask the right questions is the key to successful decision modeling

Prof. Warren Powell wrote: “What all of us do, and I think it is without exception, is look at problems through the lens of the modeling frameworks that we have been trained in. We are prototypical hammers looking for nails.

The solution: We need to educate people in how to ask the right questions. These people should *not* be trained in any analytical methodology to avoid the bias that this unavoidably introduces. Instead, they need to learn how to ask the right questions, without any bias toward a solution approach
.” Link

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Moving away from “vibe decisioning”

David Pidsley, a decision intelligence leader at Gartner, posted today this warning: “GenAI tools instantiate flaws across business decision networks with frightening efficiency when requirements are ambiguous. They will cause growing concerns about uneven decision quality, decision debt (inferred decision traces without explicitly decision models), lucky but fragile decision outcomes disguising AI sycophancy as decision logic, and jeopardizing economic viability by adding unspecified additional contextual data to enterprise decisions.

Enterprises will be moving away from experimental “vibe decisioning” toward decision architecture-first platforms with governance and quality controls. That’s another reason for the demand for decision intelligence platforms.
Link

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More about Decision Reasoning Traces

Tony Seale: “Real decisions are never made in a single system. They are made by stitching together signals from CRM, finance, operations, support systems, policy documents, Slack threads – often with human judgement applied at the seams. The most valuable data for enterprise AI is not just what happened, but how and why a decision was reached. This mirrors exactly what foundation model companies discovered when they started building reasoning models. Performance didn’t improve just by scaling data – it improved when they began collecting reasoning traces.Link

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2025 LLMs in Review by Peter Norvig

Peter Norvig wrote today: “I am now done comparing three LLMs to my own coding on the Advent of Code problems. The LLMs did great! They couldn’t have done it last year.” Here are his main conclusions after asking 3 different LLMs to solve 12 puzzles:

  • Overall, the LLMs did very well, producing code that gives the correct answer to every puzzle.
  • I’m beginning to think I should use an LLM as an assistant for all my coding, not just as an experiment like this.
  • This is a huge improvement over just one year ago, when LLMs could not perform anywhere near this level.
  • The three LLMS seemed to be roughly equal in quality.
  • The LLMs knew the things you would want an experienced software engineer to know

See the full analysis at https://lnkd.in/gCc2iuPK

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2025 LLM Year in Review by Andrey Karpathy

Andrey Karpathy published a not-too-technical review of technical developments in generative AI this year: “2025 was an exciting and mildly surprising year of LLMs. LLMs are emerging as a new kind of intelligence, simultaneously a lot smarter than I expected and a lot dumber than I expected.” Link

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Causal Understanding

Today Pieter van Schalkwyk posted “Decision Traces for Agentic Operations: Why Agents Need Operational Memory“. Here are just a few quotes:

True agency requires causal understanding: Not just knowing what happened, but why it happened and what could happen next. This is what separates genuine AI agents from workflows with chatbot interfaces.

Rules vs. Decision Traces: Rules tell an agent what should happen in general. Decision traces capture what happened in each specific case and why it happened. Link

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Optimization as a Decision Intelligence tool

“Does having a working optimization model guarantee business impact? The uncomfortable answer is no. You can follow every best practice, deploy on the latest technology, and satisfy every stakeholder requirement, and still fail to drive the outcomes your company needs.

Why? Because optimization is a means to an end, not the end itself.

Today, we’re stepping back to see the bigger picture: Decision Intelligence. This is the framework that places optimization within the broader context of engineering decisions that lead to desired outcomes and then operationalizing those decisions in systems that ensure the intended actions are actually taken.” Link See also

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DecisionCAMP-2026

The year 2026 is swiftly approaching. We’ve just published a new website for DecisionCAMP-2026. This is a major annual event devoted to Decision Intelligence Technologies. It is scheduled to take place online from August 26 to 28, 2026. It is organized by the Decision Management Community and will take place concurrently with the Declarative AI 2026 conference. The Registration is FREE. Call for Presentations is open – you may submit your abstract via EasyChair. Contact us if you plan to present and have any questions.

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Aristotle & Dantzig: How a 2000 year old ethos aligns with 20th century mathematics

This post is about a bridge between Aristotelian ethics and George Dantzig’s work. Here is where these two great thinkers align:
– Aristotle: Practical wisdom is the ability to deliberate well about what is possible.
– Dantzig: Optimization is the discipline of finding what is best(subject to what is possible = the constraints) Link

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