9. The decision-making process of claim 1 , including agents operative to: a) select a plan of action regarding the situation by determining whether preconditions of the selected plan are satisfied with respect to the experience knowledge base, and b) evaluate the plan of action by asserting effects of the plan into the experience knowledge base and check whether relevant goals become true.
1. An improved decision-making process, comprising the steps of: providing a collaborative, team-oriented computer architecture wherein human and software agents interact through a shared mental model including an experience knowledge base; receiving information regarding a current situation to be analyzed; consulting the experience knowledge base to qualify the received information based upon any similarities to the current situation; presenting the qualified information to a user through one of the agents; interacting with the user to receive assistance in the form of assumptions or expectancies about the situation; providing the refined information and assumptions or expectancies to other agents; utilizing cues in the experience knowledge base to contact one or more external information sources to gather missing, relevant information, if any, in support of the assumptions or expectancies; using the missing, relevant information in conjunction with other collected information to determine whether a decision about the situation is evolving in an anticipated direction; and, if so: informing the user and updating the experience knowledge base to enhance the quality or timeliness of future decisions regarding similar situations.