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n1 [soylentnews.org] writes:

At USC, researchers are studying how to train the next generation of negotiators — and doing so will require teaching machines how to convincingly lie.

Using training programs called virtual humans, computer scientists want to help tomorrow’s leaders realize when the person sitting across from them is bluffing their way to a better deal. Virtual humans already exist to train users in leadership and communication skills; someday soon, they could be a normal part of a business education.

Jonathan Gratch, director of the Virtual Humans Research team at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, will present a conference paper in May outlining one of the challenges for building successful negotiation programs.

[...] In a study Gratch led, participants were fooled into accepting worse deals when their computer opponent expressed disappointment.

Gratch and his colleagues recruited 75 study participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, asking them to negotiate over baskets of fruit. The computer would claim to want all the fruit — though in reality it only cared about certain kinds. When the participants gave in and split the fruit evenly, the computer would begrudgingly accept, saying, “I’m not happy, but I want to be fair.”

That “concession” tricked the human participants into thinking the computer was giving up more than it really was.

“People tend to believe we’re fighting over the same things, so you’re inclined to believe the fixed-pie lie,” Gratch said. “With this technique, if you realize early on that you can grow the pie, you can pretend that it’s fixed to make your opponent believe they got half of the pie.”

Source: University of Southern California [usc.edu]

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