July 31, 2003
PAM, DARPA, Decision Markets and Dumb Agents
DARPA came under fire this week for its plan to launch August 1st, the Policy Analysis Market, or "PAM", to help predict the future. Though the Web site is down now, the plan had been to use so-called "dumb agents" to predict the likelihood of terrorist and other disruptive events in the geo-political arena, specifically the Mid-East.
Unfortunately, the political firestorm of "wagering death", as some have called it, led Senators Byron Dorgan and Ron Wyden to declare the plan not only “offensive” but also “useless” and “harebrained”. The problem is, decision markets such as PAM really work - markets around the Internet predict which movies will flop or fly, while orange juice futures are better predictors of Florida weather than weather forecasts are… et cetera, ad nauseum.
But, we'll never get the chance to find out whether the aggregate predictions of thousands of bets on future events might have improved American intelligence or averted disaster, thanks to the moral grandstanding of a few politicos. Maybe somebody in the private sector will give it a try...
- Arik
Posted by Arik Johnson at July 31, 2003 01:07 PM | TrackBack
"Competitive Intelligence applies the lessons of competition and principles of intelligence to the need for every business to gain awareness and predictability of market risk and opportunity. By doing so, CI has the power to transform an enterprise from also-ran into a real winner, with agility enough to create and maintain sustainable competitive advantage."
