Can AI Negotiate? Walmart Is Betting on It
Walmart and Wesco International are among the first major companies to use this so-called Negotiation-as-a-Service (NaaS) product from Pactum. Logistics giant Maersk has also recently begun developing a pilot with the U.S.-Estonian startup.
"The system learns how people negotiate. It tries different strategies and tactics and gets better with each subsequent negotiation."
How it works: Pactum's AI is capable of reading contracts, integrating the priorities and instructions of both parties, negotiating on behalf of clients — and learning from the process.
Cold water: Pactum isn't a person, so it's likely there will be cases in which its natural language processing doesn't understand a term, or the more human aspects of conversation like tone and subtext.
There is also the risk that vendors will feel devalued or dehumanized in the negotiation process. However, Rand says that vendors that have used the system so far report feeling more heard in negotiations because the chatbot interface was more than they were offered by these companies previously.
