Programming in Natural Language

Posted on April 5, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Stephane Dalbera: “The fantasy of programming in natural language didn’t emerge with Large Language Models; it’s been a topic of discussion for decades. It’s interesting to note that Edsger W. Dijkstra’s 1978 critique remains, in many aspects, highly relevant today.

In his paper titled “On the foolishness of ‘natural language programming’,” Dijkstra argued that the inherent ambiguities and imprecision of natural languages make them unsuitable for programming purposes. He emphasized the value of formal symbolisms in programming, stating that they are an effective tool for ruling out various forms of nonsense that are almost impossible to avoid when using natural language.

Dijkstra’s insights continue to resonate in contemporary discussions about the feasibility and desirability of natural language programming, especially in the context of advancements in AI and machine learning.

At a glance: The future will be unambiguous, or it will not be.” Link

Posted in Natural Language Processing | Leave a comment

Challenge April-2025 “Case Assignments”

Posted on April 2, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

An analytical firm assigns different cases to its analysts using the following rules:

  • Case must be assigned to an analyst who has the same focus area as the case type
  • Analysts can not work on a new case with an amount higher than their maximum allowed case amount.
  • Analysts can not work on a new case if it puts them over their maximum total cases dollar amount
  • Analyst Levels must correspond to Case Complexity: analysts can work only on new cases with complexity between their Minimum Case Complexity and Maximum Case Complexity (inclusive).

Given a list of analysts with their current workload and a list of new cases, you need to help the firm to decide which analysts should be assigned to these cases. If there are multiple options, the firm prefers to minimize the overqualification when analysts are assigned to the cases below their levels. Can you create a decision service capable of addressing this and similar problems? Link

Posted in Challenges, Decision Modeling, Optimization | Leave a comment

Streaming intelligible speech from the brain in real time

Posted on April 2, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

A team of researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco has unlocked a way to restore naturalistic speech for people with severe paralysis. This work solves the long-standing challenge of latency in speech neuroprostheses, the time lag between when a subject attempts to speak and when sound is produced. Using recent advances in artificial intelligence-based modeling, the researchers developed a streaming method that synthesizes brain signals into audible speech in near-real time. Link

Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Human-Machine Interaction | Leave a comment

Can AI code an Entire Optimization Model?

Posted on March 30, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

SolverMax attempted to use an LLM tool to create an entire, non-trivial optimization model, with the AI doing all the programming. They asked Copilot to “Design a crop rotation optimization model“. Copilot responds with a comprehensive specification for this situation, but the entire process was not straightforward. It is described at https://www.solvermax.com/blog/can-ai-code-an-entire-optimization-model. Here is the conclusion:

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Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Optimization | Leave a comment

AI Interview

Posted on March 30, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Kurt Cagle: “I’ve been interviewed hundreds of times over my career for work-related positions, consultations, and podcasts. An interview is a conversation. It is a chance to get to know the people you might be working with, to assess the company, to find out more about the kind of personalities that would be around me. It’s a chance to network, make new contacts, and explore alternative ways of working together, for profit or otherwise, in the future.

An AI interview tells me that the people involved were unwilling to take the time even to have a conversation. It means that their primary driving motivation is financially driven rather than driven by a real problem to be solved, that they view people as being interchangeable as long as they find the necessary minimal skillset, and that they fear exposure to the public. There is no way that the business culture at such a company would be anything but toxic.” Link

Posted in Human-Machine Interaction | Leave a comment

New book about Business Decision Modeling

Posted on March 28, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Jacob Feldman just published a new book “Business Decision Modeling with OpenRules” available from Amazon. “This book is oriented to subject matter experts who want to build operational decision models for their business environments. No programming skills are required. The objective is to help readers learn quickly how to apply the decision modeling approach to building real-world decision models. This book will guide readers through practical examples, starting with simple business problems and moving to complex ones. Reading the book, you will end up with a deep understanding of practical decision-modeling techniques. You will learn how to apply Business Rules, Machine Learning, and Optimization tools to build your domain-specific decision models.” Link

Posted in Books, Decision Intelligence, Decision Modeling | Leave a comment

Java continues to perform well 

Posted on March 28, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Despite the predictions of doomsayers, Java is still a very relevant and clever choice for startups of any size in 2025. Especially with all the goodies just released with Java 24. Java is entirely responsible for Netflix’s success story. It still does all the heavy lifting in the backend—successfully. Link

Posted in Java, Languages | Leave a comment

AI Index Reports

Posted on March 26, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI): “The mission of the AI Index is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, and globally sourced data for policymakers, researchers, journalists, executives, and the general public to develop a deeper understanding of the complex field of AI. To achieve this, we track, collate, distill, and visualize data relating to artificial intelligence.” The 2025 AI Index Report is coming soon on April 7. Here are the key takeaways from the 2024 AI Index Report:

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Posted in Artificial Intelligence, Trends | Leave a comment

Philippe Kahn

Posted on March 21, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Stéphane Dalbera posts biographies of the most influential figures in the history of software development. Today he wrote about Philippe Kahn: “Meet Philippe Kahn – a visionary mathematician, entrepreneur, and tech industry pioneer. Best known for inventing the camera phone in 1997, Philippe has profoundly influenced technology, communication, and social media.
Born into a family of Holocaust survivors, Philippe’s resilience was forged by his mother’s bravery as a member of the French Resistance. He pursued higher education at ETH Zürich and the University of Nice, earning master’s degrees in mathematics and classical flute performance – a testament to his diverse talents.
After emigrating to Silicon Valley, Philippe bootstrapped his first company, Borland, transforming it into a software powerhouse. Under his leadership, Borland introduced groundbreaking tools like Turbo C++, Turbo Pascal, and Turbo Prolog, setting new industry standards in software development.
His philosophy emphasized software craftsmanship, quality, and customer-centricity, shaping the future of programming.” Link

Posted in Most Influential, Software Development | Leave a comment

NVIDIA Open-Sources cuOpt for Decision Optimization

Posted on March 19, 2025 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Optimization has always been at the core of computational research, and now, a new frontier is emerging—one where open-source innovation meets GPU acceleration. COIN-OR and NVIDIA are collaborating to bring NVIDIA cuOpt, a GPU-accelerated optimization engine, into the COIN-OR open-source ecosystem. This collaboration aims to empower researchers, developers, and industry leaders with cutting-edge tools to drive breakthroughs in large-scale optimization. Link

Note that COIN and other optimization tools are also freely available to Java developers via JavaSolver and to business analysts via RuleSolver.

Posted in Optimization, Products | Leave a comment