Show HN: Mediator.ai – Using Nash bargaining and LLMs to systematize fairness

I think this is very useful. I wonder if you have people that actually used in difficult situations? maybe family separations or challenging stuff like that, where I see a lot of potential but also resistance.

This said, I think the challenging part for the users is clearly setting the utility function. I agree LLMs can help there, but I have few concerns wrt that.

Great idea though I am skeptical it will be adopted in contentious situations without some sort of stick. In amorphous situations where there is just high trust but an aversion to talking things out I could see this kind of tool being used. But in contentious or low trust situations (strangers) I suspect most people do not want fairness, they want to be ahead. A fair agreement will, paradoxically, disappoint everyone since every party feels the lack of clear advantage.

Super interesting, thank you for sharing!

I have published some research on using LLMs for mediation here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.16732 and https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.07053

These papers describe the LLMediator, a platform that uses LLMs to:

a) ensure a discussion maintains a positive tone by flagging and offering reformulated versions of messages that may derail the conversation

b) suggest intervention messages that the mediator can use to intervene in the discussion and guide the parties toward a positive outcome.

Overall, LLMs seem to be very good at these tasks, and even compared favourably to human-written interventions. Very excited about the potential of LLMs to lower the barrier to mediation, as it has a lot of potential to resolve disputes in a positive and collaborative manner.

This doesn't seem to have any notion of power? Coming up with a fair agreement between people who have equal power over the thing they care equally about, isn't that hard.

But when one side is indifferent to something the other side cares deeply about, yet has veto power to spoil it, a Nash agreement isn't going to be "fair" in the usual sense of the word.

Feels like the tricky part here isn’t computing a “fair” outcome, but defining what fairness even means in the first place.

Once you formalize preferences into something comparable, you’re already making a lot of assumptions about how people value outcomes.

This is so cool. Even small disputes like roommate arrangements can feel very emotionally impactful at the time and it would be wonderful to have a tool for these moments

Fabulous idea. LLM-assisted mediation is brilliant because it has the potential to bring the benefits of mediation to the masses. The addressable market is all of humanity. Even if all you did was focus this app on co-parenting arguments, you could help millions of people every day.

John Nash's ideas are still relevant today - highlights how great he was - I liked how you used a genetic algorithm here!

Brilliant! Love seeing this space start to wake up.

Last year I built https://andshake.app to prevent the need for conflict resolution… by getting things clear up front.

I agree that AI has much to offer in low-stakes agreements to help people move forward in cooperation.

Its an interesting idea. I've seen a few of these but not with ol' John's spin on it.

Do you want the first link "How it Works" to really be just the # of front page? it makes it feel like it's broken if someone clicks it. Also your blog about Nash Bargaining is almost more of a "How it Works" page than the How it Works page is.

I feel like your landing page very quickly told me what your website does which is great. If the Nash Bargaining is the "wedge" to separate you from the pack, I'd try explain how that differentiates this over the others as quickly as possible. I know that's easier said than done. Good luck!

Very interesting! For limitations, I'd add stated vs revealed preference. Currently the system assumes than what people say is what they actually prefer, but that's not always the case. If that is already addressed in your tool, I think it would be nice to mention it!

I would love something like this to use with my HOA. About to start mediation and the estimate for the mediator alone is ~$20k.

How about Iran/US conflict ? or Israel/Palestine conflict ?

Is anyone working on this ? seems like a big win for AI if it can be done.

Basically, the negotiating game is will break down to demanding absolute maximum and pretending you care a lot more then you care. The more demanding person gets more, less demanding person is taken for a ride.

definitely a great use of LLMs

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EDIT - in all fairness I find the blog entry much more persuasive: https://mediator.ai/blog/ai-negotiation-nash-bargaining/

That said, given the fictional example:

Honestly I’m on Daniel’s side - they agreed on a 50/50 split, and they’ve both been working their asses off to make the business work. It’s an arrangement that clearly both of them have been actively participating in, not trying to push back against, for a year and a half.

And the supposed insight this product offers is to… split the difference? Between Maya’s power play for 70/30, and Daniel’s insistence on the original 50/50? 60/40 is the brilliant proposal?

How could they stand to work together afterwards, knowing she thinks she deserves 70% of the profit, but was willing to ‘settle’ for 60%? Why would you want to keep working with someone who screwed you over that way? Their partnership is toast. All the mediation really does is… I don’t know, what? How is this good for Daniel? This ain’t any kind of reconciliation, surely.

Is the argument that it’d be easier for her to get a new baker, than it is for him to get a new business manager?

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