Subject areaProcess and organisation
Also known asRumsfeld squareknown unknowns matrix
The Rumsfeld matrix is a four-quadrant scheme for sorting what is known and what is not before a decision.
It is named after Donald Rumsfeld, then United States Secretary of Defense, who at the press conference of 12 February 2002 distinguished between "known knowns", "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns".
The four quadrants are:
- known knowns: the things we know we know;
- known unknowns: the things we know we do not know, which research can address;
- unknown knowns: the things we know without knowing we know them. This is the quadrant added by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, home to habits and beliefs nobody questions;
- unknown unknowns: the things we do not even know we ignore.
The articles on this site apply it to artificial intelligence, because the greatest risk of adoption often lies in the last two quadrants, which ordinary planning does not see.
Source: Dipartimento della Difesa degli Stati Uniti, trascrizione della conferenza stampa di Donald Rumsfeld del 12/02/2002; Slavoj Žižek, What Rumsfeld Doesn't Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib, In These Times, 2004.
An example
A manufacturing company applies the matrix to artificial intelligence: it knows its quotes are slow (known known), knows it does not know the cost of integrating its data (known unknown), is unaware its engineers already use their own tools (unknown known) and cannot foresee how customer demand will change (unknown unknown).
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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