Decision Analytic Networks in Artificial Intelligence

Researchers in artificial intelligence and decision analysis share a concern with the construction of formal models of human knowledge and expertise. Historically, however, their approaches to these problems have diverged. Members of these two communities have recently discovered common ground: a family of graphical models of decision theory known as influence diagrams or as belief networks. These models are equally attractive to theoreticians, decision modelers, and designers of knowledge-based systems. From a theoretical perspective, they combine graph theory, probability theory and decision theory. From an implementation perspective, they lead to powerful automated systems. Although many practicing decision analysts have already adopted influence diagrams as modeling and structuring tools, they may remain unaware of the theoretical work that has emerged from the artificial intelligence community. This paper surveys the first decade or so of this work.