Conference Service Mandl

abstract: Negotiation is a complex and sometimes emotional decision-making process aiming to reach an agreement to exchange goods or services. Although a daily activity, extensive research has shown that few people are effective negotiators. Current state of the art negotiation support systems can help make a significant improvement in negotiation performance. In particular, when the negotiation space is well-understood such systems can make a difference, partly because machines can much better deal with the computational complexity involved. However, the negotiation space can only be properly developed if the human parties jointly explore their interests. The inherent semantic problem and the emotional issues involved make that negotiation cannot be handled by artificial intelligence alone, and a human-machine collaborative system is required. Such systems are not only to support humans in providing strategic advice but also in coping with emotions and moods in human-human interactions.

In order to develop human-machine collaborative negotiation support systems there is a need for the development of computational models, frameworks, and experimental and user-centred methods that enable the engineering of negotiation support systems. It is important for this purpose to study the role of human factors in negotiation as well as computational models to enable intelligent support for negotiation. To develop the next generation of negotiation support systems there are still many, diverse challenges: models of (qualitative, incomplete) preferences, preference change and strategies, preference elicitation, assessment methods for negotiation performance, learning and adaptativeness in negotiation, models of emotion and user awareness, the use and creation of domain knowledge, user interfaces for negotiation support, human-supported assessment of opponent, conflict handling styles, experimental methods.