Master the business problem. Let AI handle the notation.

This is a summary of the latest post by Adam DeJans Jr. “If you’re an operations researcher who’s mad that LLMs can now formulate basic linear programs, you’ve been coasting on syntax for way too long.

The optimization community is having a full identity crisis right now. AI can write LP formulations, handle the mathematical notation, and solve straightforward problems. And instead of adapting, some folks are acting like their entire profession just got invalidated
.

If an LLM can replace you, you were already replaceable.

The best practitioners I know? They’re thrilled. They’re using AI to blast through the syntax work and spending their brain power where it actually matters – on business insight, problem framing, and driving operational impact.
Link

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Solvers are like cars: focus on driving in the right direction, before you worry about speed

This is a quote from Geoffrey De Smet’s post, “What stops Operations Research from being widely adopted?” His answers:

  • Fit For Purpose
  • Ease of use
  • Time to market
  • Scalability
Posted in Decision Optimization, solvers | 1 Comment

Decisions vs Policies

The latest post by Adam DeJans Jr. is so important that we decided to reproduce it here. He questions whether we always need a model to make a decision and describes the essential difference between decisions and policies. “A decision is an action you take given what you know now. A policy is a rule for deciding over time. Decisions are moments. Policies are patterns.” Link

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 “AI is going to make everything better!”

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Challenge Oct-2025 “Decision with two objectives”

This challenge is offered by Dr. Meinolf Sellmann. A freelance webpage developer received a task. A client has a budget of $10,000 and wants a webpage developed with as many features as possible while maximizing the total value of these features. The client leaves the decision of which features to the developer. She wants to delight the client and asks you which features would be best to select. We have the budget constraint and two objectives. Can you devise a rational way to trade them against each other? Link

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Prof Warren Powell: What is a decision?

Prof. W. Powell announced his newest webpage, “What is a decision?” covering these headings:

1)    What is a decision?
2)    What types of decisions are there?
3)    What does a decision do?
4)    We make decisions to solve a problem, but what do we mean by a “problem”?
5)    What are the decisions that we can make?
6)    How do we make decisions?
7)    “State variables” are fundamental in dynamic problems, but what is a state variable?
8)    What is the value of information? Link

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Why Ontology driven (LLM-free) AI systems are needed

On 7 October 2025, Bas van der Raadt presented “Ontology and business rules in practice” at VU Amsterdam where he talked about:
– Problems with code based systems
– Why ontology driven AI systems are needed
– What is an ontology?
– How to verbalize an ontology
– What is a business rule?
– How to verbalize business rules (i.e. with SBVR)
How to make a LLM-free AI system that runs from an ontology without code generation
– How to develop an ontology
– Ontology goes beyond just information (facts), how are processes and actions also part of an ontology
– Different ontology languages, like OntoUML, DEMO, i* and e3-value
– How to combine those languages into one modelling approach. Here are the slides.

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LION20: The 20th Learning and Intelligent OptimizatioN Conference

The 20th Learning and Intelligent Optimization Conference (LION) will be held on 15-19 June 2026, in Milan, Italy. It will include a special session: LEARNING AND OPTIMIZATION UNDER UNCERTAINTY FOR DYNAMIC AUTONOMOUS NAVIGATION. https://www.lion20.org/

Posted in Machine Learning, Optimization, Uncertainty | 1 Comment

Decision Agents Today

Right after DecisionCAMP-2025, where James Taylor was the moderator of the Expert Panel, he posted a nice presentation, “Building Decision Agents with LLMs & Machine Learning Models,” about Decision Agents within modern decision intelligence platforms. A brief summary:

  • Do not use LLMs to make decisions or act as autonomous decision agents.
  • Instead, leverage LLMs to ingest decision agents and provide clear, contextualized explanations of made decisions to end users. Link

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DecisionCAMP-2025 Poll Results

During DecisionCAMP-2025, we conducted the poll “Using LLM-based tools in the Decision Intelligence Context“. This poll pertained solely to Operational Repetitive Business Decisions. It contained 13 questions about the use of LLMs for the various decision automation tasks. Here are the strongest choices (with more than 45%):

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