You may know the art of the deal, but there’s a science to it, too. And artificial intelligence is beginning to learn it. Computers that could negotiate for us could automate and optimize everything from traffic intersections to global treaties. Last month, at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Melbourne, Australia, a group of researchers presented a paper on the challenges and opportunities of such hagglebots. Science spoke with the paper’s lead author, Tim Baarslag, a computer scientist at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What can autonomous negotiators do today?

A: There are simple bots on eBay, for example “sniping agents” that bid at the last possible second. And there’s software that bids for ad placement online. Then there are negotiation support systems, software that assists humans by suggesting win-win outcomes. In a job negotiation, the system might suggest: “From the proposals received so far, it can be deduced that the salary level is very important for your boss, while you have previously indicated you value family life most of all. Perhaps asking instead for a work day at home could be in your mutual interest.” And then there are agents in our IJCAI competition that, for example, play the board game Diplomacy with each other: “If you help me invade this country then later I can help you invade that country.” But they can’t strike deals without knowing the user’s preferences. We still lack autonomous negotiators in the full sense of the word.

 

 

Q: Should we expect people to behave differently when represented by bots?

A: Human lawyers are sometimes actually ethically permitted or even expected by their clients to misrepresent what has happened. And in autonomous driving, people want cars to have certain ethical behaviors, but when it concerns their own car they easily sacrifice these ideals. We need to study much more carefully what this will lead to in the future.

Read original article


Tags: