Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation

On May 17th and 18th, 2020 the Program on Negotiation (PON) hosted a virtual working conference on AI, technology, and negotiation.

In 1994 PON convened a conference on computers and negotiation that was prescient in many respects. Much has happened in the last quarter century that no one could foresee. This conference explored the expanding role that technology is playing in negotiations and where it may lead.

The PON Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation was designed to:

Convene scholars, teachers, and practitioners to share insights, experiences, tools, and their expectations for further developments.
Inform PON and its affiliates regarding opportunities for field research and development of computer-based apps and exercises for teaching.
Generate material for a special issue of the Negotiation Journal and foster on-going collaboration.

The conference was in the works for more than a year prior, but in the midst of the global pandemic, remote engagement has become all the more salient on many levels—in business, the marketplace, governance, education, and in our communities. In the field of negotiation, emerging technology holds the promise of promoting creative problem solving, but with it the possible risk of subverting privacy and amplifying inequities.

The PON Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation was co-chaired by Michael Wheeler, Professor Emeritus of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, and James Sebenius, Gordon Donaldson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and Vice Chair for Practice-Focused Research of the Program on Negotiation Executive Committee.

Participation in this conference was by invitation only, but please check out the session descriptions and videos below:

Session A: State of the Art

Ehsan Hoque, Sandy Pentland, and Jonathan Gratch

This panel features three researchers who present how the projected progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) could impact the way negotiations take place in the future. With AI’s ability to decipher subtle human behavior, motivations, and persuasiveness as good as humans—in some cases, better than humans—what new possibilities can we envision? Can we train a computer avatar to represent humans in virtual negotiations? Should we? This panel discusses the technological, ethical, and societal implications of how AI could potentially transform the field of negotiations while continuing to promote equality, transparency, and peace.

Session B: Technology and Negotiation – Lessons from Online Dispute Resolution

Ethan Katsh, Leah Wing, Jan Martinez, and Colin Rule

As the pandemic forces public and private institutions to move online, many court and business leaders are looking to the field of online dispute resolution (ODR) for best practices and lessons learned. Developed over the last twenty years (largely in response to the growth of eCommerce) the ODR field has generated a deep well of theory and practice while also identifying potential ethical dilemmas and risks. The four presenters on this panel are leaders in ADR and ODR, with extensive experience as researchers and service providers. They share the story of ODR’s development, describe what we know and what we still need to know, and sketch out a vision for the future where technology (referred to as the “fourth party” in ODR parlance) plays an integral role in how we negotiate resolutions to our disputes across society.

Participants discover of the range of tools and techniques encompassed by various definitions of online dispute resolution (ODR); learn the history of ODR’s development; consider some of the ethical challenges raised by ODR practice; understand the key questions and choices that need to be made in designing ODR systems; and see examples of where and how ODR is being implemented to assist negotiators.

Session C: The Potentially Critical Roles of Social Media in Negotiation

James Sebenius, Alvaro Renedo Zalba, Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, Ben Cook, and Isaac Silberberg

Although the rise of social media has transformed many sectors of society from politics to news to culture, relatively little attention has apparently been paid to the potentially “first-order” roles that social media does or might play in negotiations, especially those in the public eye. After reviewing the literature on this topic, this panel seeks a) to learn from the experience of current practitioners how social media can affect high-stakes negotiations along with mistakes and best practices in this domain, b) to probe multiple recent negotiations to ask how social media did and might affect the process, and c) to develop tentative diagnostic and prescriptive generalizations about the use of social media in negotiations, especially those in the public eye.

Session D: New Insights into Negotiation’s Psychological Processes

Alison Wood Brooks, Juliana Schroeder, and Michael Yeomans

This session features three researchers who collect and analyze communication data in experimental settings to understand psychological processes and outcomes in negotiations. They discuss the latest methods for collecting and analyzing communication data—such as natural language processing, identifying nonverbal as well as verbal communication patterns, physiological recordings, and different conversational platforms—with examples from their own research to provide insight into how the structure of a conversation (e.g., the communication medium by which it occurs) and behavior before and after the conversation unfolds (e.g., how people prepare, how many questions are asked, the extent of pauses and laughter) causally change conflict outcomes.

Session E: Technologies that Enhance Students’ Learning of Negotiation

Jeanne Brett, Chris Dede, Emmanuel Johnson, Kristjan Korjus, Samuel Dinnar, and Carrie Straub

Panelists in this session present and discuss several apps designed to enhance effectiveness along several dimensions of teaching negotiation. One of the apps focuses on interpersonal skill-building through negotiating with a digital avatar controlled by a skilled human puppeteer. Other apps support scenario-based training, and organizational learning that can drive cultural change. Digital experiences simulating challenging circumstances generate rich logfiles that enable diagnostic assessment of process skills. Advances in artificial intelligence are making these simulations practical and scalable.

Participants discover the range of tools and techniques available for technology-enhanced teaching of negotiation skills, learn the likely evolution of these tools over the next few years, and see examples of where and how these tools are being implemented to help students learn the multiple dimensions of effective negotiation.

Session F: The Evolving Marketplace

Hyunjin Kim, Beibei Li, and Michael Luca

In recent decades, the rise of platforms such as Airbnb and Uber have allowed for new ways to transact – raising important questions about the design choices platforms make and data they use. More traditional markets are similarly going through a digital transformation, exploring ways to use the new data and technology at their disposal. In this session, Professor Li discusses her research on the use of new data to target customers in offline marketplaces. Professor Luca discusses his work on discrimination in online platforms, and managerial approaches to reduce discrimination. Hyunjin Kim discusses her research on how firms use easily accessible data to inform their decisions.

Session G: Social and Cultural Impacts and Implications

Sameer B. Srivastava, Jeff Hancock, and Diyi Yang

This session features four researchers who examine the social, cultural, and policy implications of new technologies that are increasingly mediating interpersonal interactions and negotiations. They discuss a broad array of topics such as: (a) the use of AI for detecting and optimizing communication for persuasion, dominance, trust, and even deception; (b) the societal challenges and opportunities of the rise of safety-critical consumer robots; (c) the use of NLP for measuring temporal variation in cultural diversity in work groups; and (d) the application of AI/NLP algorithms to recognize persuasion, detect framing bias, and neutralize language in human-human/machine communication.

Participants are exposed to a breadth of disciplinary perspectives and research methods related to the social, cultural, and policy implications of new technologies for interpersonal communication and group interaction.