Johnathan Mell

University of Southern California | USC · Institute for Creative Technologies

We present the Interactive Arbitration Guide Online (IAGO) platform , a tool for designing human-aware agents for use in negotiation. Current state-of-the-art research platforms are ideally suited for agent-agent interaction. While helpful, these often fail to address the reality of human negotiation, which involves irrational actors, natural langu...

Automated negotiation research focuses on getting the most value from a single negotiation, yet real-world settings often involve repeated serial negotiations between the same parties. Repeated negotiations are interesting because they allow the discovery of mutually beneficial solutions that don't exist within the confines of a single negotiation....

Negotiation between virtual agents and humans is a complex field that requires designers of systems to be aware not only of the efficient solutions to a given game, but also the mechanisms by which humans create value over multiple negotiations. One way of considering the agent's impact beyond a single negotiation session is by considering the use...

In this paper we assess our progress toward creating a virtual human negotiation agent with fluid turn-taking skills. To facilitate the design of this agent, we have collected a corpus of human-human negotiation roleplays as well as a corpus of Wizard-controlled human-agent negotiations in the same roleplay scenario. We compare the natural turn-tak...

Exploring the intricacies of human behavior in negotiations is piv-otal in developing advanced human-agent interaction systems. This study delves into the complex interplay between deception, personality traits, and self-reported truthfulness in the context of human-agent negotiations, leveraging the IAGO platform [34] to facilitate multi-issue bar...

Exploring the intricacies of human behavior in negotiations is piv-otal in developing advanced human-agent interaction systems. This study delves into the complex interplay between deception, personality traits, and self-reported truthfulness in the context of human-agent negotiations, leveraging the IAGO platform [34] to facilitate multi-issue bar...

While some theoretical perspectives imply that the context of a virtual training should be customized to match the intended context where those skills would ultimately be applied, others suggest this might not be necessary for learning. It is important to determine whether manipulating context matters for performance in training applications becaus...

We present the results of a machine-learning approach to the analysis of several human-agent negotiation studies. By combining expert knowledge of negotiating behavior compiled over a series of empirical studies with neural networks, we show that a hybrid approach to parameter selection yields promise for designing more effective and socially intel...

Negotiation is the complex social process by which multiple parties come to mutual agreement over a series of issues. As such, it has proven to be a key challenge problem for designing adequately social AIs that can effectively navigate this space. Artificial AI agents that are capable of negotiating must be capable of realizing policies and strate...

The Automated Negotiating Agents Competition (ANAC) is a yearly-organized international contest in which participants from all over the world develop intelligent negotiating agents for a variety of negotiation problems. To facilitate the research on agent-based negotiation, the organizers introduce new research challenges every year. ANAC 2019 pose...

Recent research shows that how we respond to other social actors depends on what sort of mind we ascribe to them. In this article we examine how perceptions of a virtual agent's mind shape behavior in human-agent negotiations. We varied descriptions and communicative behavior of virtual agents on two dimensions according to the mind perception theo...

We present the results of a machine-learning approach to the analysis of several human-agent negotiation studies. By combining expert knowledge of negotiating behavior compiled over a series of empirical studies with neural networks, we show that a hybrid approach to parameter selection yields promise for designing-more effective and socially intel...

Research has demonstrated promising benefits of applying virtual trainers to promote physical fitness. The current study investigated the value of virtual agents in the context of personal fitness, compared to trainers with greater levels of perceived agency (avatar or live human). We also explored the possibility that the effectiveness of the virt...

We present the results of a study in which humans negotiate with computerized agents employing varied tactics over a repeated number of economic ultimatum games. We report that certain agents are highly effective against particular classes of humans: several individual difference measures for the human participant are shown to be critical in determ...

We present the results of the first annual Human-Agent League of ANAC. By introducing a new human-agent negotiating platform to the research community at large, we facilitated new advancements in human-aware agents. This has succeeded in pushing the envelope in agent design, and creating a corpus of useful human-agent interaction data. Our results...

Humans that negotiate through representatives often instruct those representatives to act in certain ways that align with both the cli-ent's goals and his or her social norms. However, which tactics and ethical norms humans endorse vary widely from person to person, and these endorsements may be easy to manipulate. This work presents the results of...

Human-agent negotiation is a social task that provides a multifaceted proving ground for artificial intelligence systems that aim to interact with humans in a social context. Designing agents that are capable of negotiating with humans provides threefold benefit. First, it allows information regarding human behavior to be gleaned in an efficient an...

This work considers the possibility of using virtual agents to encourage disclosure for sensitive information. In particular, this research used “prestige questions”, which asked participants to disclose information relevant to their socioeconomic status, such as credit limit, as well as university attendance, and mortgage or rent payments they cou...

Virtual agents have been used as tools in negotiation—from acting as mediators to manifesting as full-fledged conversational partners. Virtual agents are a powerful tool for teaching negotiation skills, but require an accurate model of human behavior to perform well both as partners and teachers. The work proposed here aims to expand the current ho...

Automated negotiation between two agents has been the subject of much research focused on optimization and efficiency. However , human-agent negotiation represents a field in which real-world considerations can be more fully explored. Furthermore, teaching negotiation and other interpersonal skills requires long periods of practice with open-ended...

Emotive virtual agents are seen to be a valuable tool in various research domains, including human studies, training, entertainment, and medicine. However, systems that primarily focus on social-emotional agents are largely domain-focused, or require ample customization to make them usable. The importance of agents that display social emotions and...