Have you ever wished you could go back in time and change something you said? For example, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could revisit a negotiation that didn’t go your way and try it again with a different approach? With the help of AI, time travel is now possible!
In two new courses taught by MIT Sloan professor Jared Curhan, Negotiation Essentials Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning and Negotiation Strategy Sprint: AI-Accelerated Learning, participants can practice their negotiation skills with a sophisticated chatbot. Delivered as Business Sprints (on-demand offerings that can be completed any time over 30 days), these courses combine traditional negotiation pedagogy with cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, providing negotiators with immediate feedback and the opportunity revisit their negotiations and try again.
“Whether you find yourself in a leadership, managerial, or specialized role, the ability to negotiate effectively—without damaging relationships—is a skill that can make or break your success,” says Curhan. “The best way to learn how to negotiate is by combining practice with coaching, something we’ve never been able to offer at a large scale. But now, using AI, we are excited to provide a unique and asynchronous opportunity to practice and hone your learning in negotiation like never before.”
"Using AI, we are excited to provide a unique and asynchronous opportunity to practice and hone your learning in negotiation like never before."
How AI is revolutionizing negotiation research
Curhan specializes in the psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution. A recipient of support from the National Science Foundation, he has pioneered a social psychological approach to the study of “subjective value” in negotiation—that is, the feelings and judgments concerning the instrumental outcome, the process, the self, and the relationship. His research uses the Subjective Value Inventory (SVI; Curhan et al., 2006) to examine the precursors, processes, and long-term consequences of subjective value in negotiation. He also studies the dynamics of negotiation and brainstorming.
Of late, artificial intelligence has revolutionized his negotiation research in three key ways: by providing access to new types of data, enabling novel analytical methods, and introducing new forms of confederates. Confederates, in this context, are consistent elements used in experiments to simulate negotiation scenarios, similar to a tennis ball machine providing consistent shots for practice. For instance, AI can analyze the first five minutes of a negotiation to predict outcomes with significant accuracy, focusing on non-verbal cues rather than the spoken language. This approach has revealed insights such as the importance of activity level, engagement, emphasis, and mirroring in negotiations. Additionally, AI technologies like affective computing can analyze facial expressions to further understand negotiation dynamics. These advancements offer practical applications, such as designing AI-driven negotiation coaches that can provide real-time feedback and intervention strategies.
In one study, Curhan used AI to look over thousands of utterances, particularly sub-one second utterances like “Uh huh” or “Yup”, across a vast dataset of recorded negotiations and identify all the instances of value creation that were taking place spontaneously in the negotiations. Then his team used another form of technology to identify all the instances of silence or pauses in the negotiation. This was followed by a statistical analysis to examine the proportion of times that a breakthrough would occur in negotiation after a pause. This sort of analysis led to a variety of interesting conclusions, including the finding that people who are engaging in silence are more likely to engage in a deliberative mindset, which in turn makes them more likely to recognize opportunities for value creation.
You can learn more about the impact of AI on negotiation research in this recording of Curhan’s recent live webinar “AI and the Future of Negotiation.”
Shaping the negotiators of the future
Curhan has experimented with various technologies over the years to augment his teaching approach. In 2019, Curhan won MIT’s Teaching with Digital Technology Award for implementing algorithms that provided real-time negotiation feedback. Curhan later incorporated novel software that uses AI to measure nuanced emotions through facial expressions.
With the rapid onset and adoption of Generative AI and prompt engineering, Curhan saw a new opportunity to iterate on his approach: chatbots built on large language models (LLMs). With prompt engineering, AI can act almost the same way every time, or differently each time, based on the need of the experiment or teaching scenario. Curhan is able to prompt the chatbots with instructions for whichever side of the negotiation he wants the AI counterpart to play. Students can then practice negotiating with their digital counterpart as often as they like over the 30 days.
“The fusion of AI with pedagogical practice is not just the future—it’s the present,” says Curhan. “I’m genuinely excited to see how this confluence of technology and education reshapes the way we learn, practice, and master the art of negotiation.”
Learn more about Jared Curhan’s New Business Sprints
Negotiation Essentials Sprint takes a holistic approach to providing executives with the fundamentals of the art of negotiation. It enables participants to learn negotiation essentials, practice research-based negotiation strategies, and receive AI-powered coaching and feedback in real time. From creating and claiming value to building subjective value, this course is designed for executives and other decision makers who are seeking a broad and deep understanding of negotiation theory, research, and skills.
“It was a new experience for me. Negotiation skills are really important because I’m dealing with different stakeholders from government entities to project partners,” said Asmaa Abouleish, a recent participant in this on-demand course. “The strategies I learned have helped me secure better terms and foster strong collaborations for the success of our projects.”
Negotiation Strategy Sprint takes a deep dive into the necessary tools for successful negotiation. Utilizing a framework developed by MIT in collaboration with Harvard, the course helps executives understand how to properly prepare for a negotiation, their own personality towards an organization, and the differences between these conversations in various settings. This course allows the opportunity for participants to practice course learnings from the Negotiation Essentials Sprint course through real-world application, while still developing some of the soft skills to make their negotiations more successful.