Artificial intelligence is often associated with areas like fraud detection, medical imaging, or contract review. But what happens when AI enters one of the most human arenas of all—negotiation?
At the 2025 MIT AI Negotiation Summit, experts from across academia and industry shared how AI is already shaping negotiation research, teaching, and practice.
“As the summit drew to a close, it became evident that the field of negotiation is on the cusp of a significant transformation,” writes Jared Curhan, MIT Sloan professor and co-chair of the event, in this recent article. “AI is emerging as both a powerful analytical tool and a pedagogical partner—reshaping how negotiation is studied, practiced, and taught.”
He shared the following key takeaways from the event:
- Preparation matters: Prompting strategies that guide AI step by step can mirror human negotiation prep.
- Finding common ground: AI can help groups reach consensus by incorporating diverse perspectives and surfacing patterns across many negotiations.
- Beware of gullibility: Some bots can be tricked into revealing their final offers early, giving savvy negotiators an edge.
- Warmth wins: Bots designed to foster rapport consistently outperformed those focused on dominance.
- Sharper analysis: AI tools may already be more accurate than humans in identifying what’s actually happening in negotiation transcripts.
- Democratizing the field: AI tools are opening high-quality negotiation training to a much broader audience.
- AI as coach: Real-time AI feedback can boost negotiation performance—if applied thoughtfully.
Join your peers for one of Jared Curhan’s Executive Education courses, including his negotiation sprints that engage sophisticated AI chatbots for skill practice and refinement: Negotiation for Executives, Negotiation Essentials Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning, and Negotiation Strategy Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning.