Automated negotiation is a form of interaction in systems that are composed of multiple
autonomous agents, in which the aim is to reach agreements through an iterative process of making offers.
Automated negotiation can be employed for many tasks human negotiators regularly engage in, such as
bargaining
In the social sciences, bargaining or haggling is a type of negotiation in which the buyer and seller of a Goods and services, good or service debate the price or nature of a Financial transaction, transaction. If the bargaining produces agree ...
and
joint decision making. The main topics in automated negotiation revolve around the design of
protocols
Protocol may refer to:
Sociology and politics
* Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states
* Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state
* Etiquette, a code of personal behavior
Science and technology
...
and
strategies.
History
Through digitization, the beginning of the 21st century has seen a growing interest in the automation of negotiation and e-negotiation systems, for example in the setting of
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...
. This interest is fueled by the promise of automated agents being able to negotiate on behalf of human negotiators, and to find better outcomes than human negotiators.
Examples
Examples of automated negotiation include:
*
Online dispute resolution, in which disagreements between parties are settled.
*
Sponsored search auction, where bids are placed on advertisement keywords.
*
Content negotiation
In computing, content negotiation refers to mechanisms defined as a part of HTTP that make it possible to serve different versions of a document (or more generally, representations of a resource) at the same URI, so that user agents can specify w ...
, in which
user agents negotiate over HTTP about how to best represent a web resource.
*
Negotiation support systems, in which negotiation decision-making activities are supported by an
information system
An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, Information Processing and Management, store, and information distribution, distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, info ...
.
References
Artificial intelligence
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