Free Will, AI, and Negotiations

I suck at negotiation. Always have.

Winning a negotiation is about gaining leverage. Gaining leverage is the art of knowing what the other side cares about. I suck at that art. 

Luckily, here come the hagglebots.

Procurement departments rejoice! Bots with all of the info, including what makes the other side tick, will soon be on a tear. Hagglebots will be putting the squeeze on the supply chain. 

I’ve paid almost full price for my cars. I’ve rarely made headway on salary or benefits moving into a new job. I can’t remember a touchy situation when I successfully extracted what I wanted. 

But that doesn’t mean I’ve always come out of negotiations feeling like a loser. 

There’s more to winning a negotiation than any objective measure because winning is a feeling. You’ve won if you felt like you got a good deal. The best negotiators know this. If you can make the other side feel like they’re getting a good deal, i.e., the proverbial win-win, then you’ve actually won. 

Would an AI ever think to itself, “I feel like I got a good deal.”