Incorporating issues of fairness into development of a multi-agent negotiation support system

  • Authors:

  • John Zeleznikow;Brooke Abrahams

  • Affiliations:

  • Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia;Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

One of the major concerns raised by people using Negotiation Support Systems is about the fairness of the process. Individuals undertake negotiation to derive better outcomes than could be obtained from conflict and litigation. Thus they often engage in interest based negotiation. But interest based negotiation focuses upon the interests of disputants rather than upon objective measures of fairness or justice. For example in family law, differences in power between men and women may lead to negotiated results that favor men. Bargaining imbalances can thus produce unfair results unless mediators or Negotiation Support Systems overcome them. It is thus vital to incorporate measures to address fairness in the development of Negotiation Support Systems. The paper describes the development of a multi-agent based Negotiation Support System designed to assist disputants to achieve legally fairer negotiated outcomes. The system uses a Bayesian Belief Network and Artificial Intelligence techniques to incorporate Best Alternatives to Negotiated Agreements into an integrative bargaining process. Through this system, we aim to demonstrate how principles of legal fairness can be applied in Australian Family Law.