The difference between analysis automation—inference—anddecision automation is that in the latter the system must make implicit or explicit assump-tions about costs and values inherent in all decisions.

Examples of decisionautomation include route planning and adaptation, such as to avoid bad weather, and systems pro-viding medical diagnosis support.

Decision automation means deciding and selecting appropriate actions among alternatives.This type of automation corresponds to the third human information processing state, decision-making, which the machine is either augmenting or replacing altogether.