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- October 19, 2026
- Decision Science
A Theory of Intelligent Decision Making: From Situation Perception to Energy-Efficient Choice
Date: 2026-10-23
Time: 4:30 PM - 5:50 PM
Venue: 90402 International Hall
Speaker: Prof. SooHong Chew (National University of Singapore)
Roughly fourteen billion years ago, the Big Bang began a cosmic history in which matter and energy would eventually give rise to life-and some of that life would learn to think. On Earth, life emerged around four billion years ago; brains followed much later, enabling organisms to transform information about their surroundings into increasingly flexible action. We define intelligence as goal-seeking behavior under energy and value constraints and argue that it evolved because energy is scarce and survival rewards its efficient use (Chew and Ebstein, 2026). Intelligent decision making begins with the sensory perception of the situation at hand, the options it contains along with their valuations, which are sensitive to internal states as well as external cues. The capacity for situation-sensitive choice is arguably a fundamental requirement of intelligent decision making. This raises two questions:
■ How can situations matter without leaving choice unconstrained?
■ How can situational information be reused, rather than recomputed, as new encounters arrive?
Time: 4:30 PM - 5:50 PM
Venue: 90402 International Hall
Speaker: Prof. SooHong Chew (National University of Singapore)
Roughly fourteen billion years ago, the Big Bang began a cosmic history in which matter and energy would eventually give rise to life-and some of that life would learn to think. On Earth, life emerged around four billion years ago; brains followed much later, enabling organisms to transform information about their surroundings into increasingly flexible action. We define intelligence as goal-seeking behavior under energy and value constraints and argue that it evolved because energy is scarce and survival rewards its efficient use (Chew and Ebstein, 2026). Intelligent decision making begins with the sensory perception of the situation at hand, the options it contains along with their valuations, which are sensitive to internal states as well as external cues. The capacity for situation-sensitive choice is arguably a fundamental requirement of intelligent decision making. This raises two questions:
■ How can situations matter without leaving choice unconstrained?
■ How can situational information be reused, rather than recomputed, as new encounters arrive?