Facebook’s artificial intelligence researchers announced Wednesday they had broken new ground by giving automated programs or « bots » the ability to negotiate, and make compromises.
The new technology pushes forward the ability to create bots « that can reason, converse and negotiate, all key steps in building a personalized digital assistant, » said researchers Mike Lewis and Dhruv Batra in a blog post.
Up to now, most bots or chatbots have had only the ability to hold short conversations and perform simple tasks like booking a restaurant table, according to the researchers.
But in the latest code developed by Facebook, bots will be able to dialogue and « to engage in start-to-finish negotiations with other bots or people while arriving at common decisions or outcomes, » they wrote.
Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Researchers (FAIR) team gave bots this ability by estimating the « value » of an item and inferring how much that is worth to each party.
« FAIR researchers created many such negotiation scenarios, always ensuring that it is impossible for both agents to get the best deal simultaneously, » Lewis and Batra said.
« Furthermore, walking away from the negotiation (or not agreeing on a deal after 10 rounds of dialogue) resulted in 0 points for both agents. Simply put, negotiation is essential, and good negotiation results in better performance. »
But the bots can also find ways to be sneaky.
In some cases, bots « initially feigned interest in a valueless item, only to later ‘compromise’ by conceding it—an effective negotiating tactic that people use regularly, » the researchers said.
This behavior was not programmed by the researchers « but was discovered by the bot as a method for trying to achieve its goals, » they said.
Explore further: Building a better ‘bot’: Artificial intelligence helps human groups
