Negotiation, is in general very context sensitive. Since our research laboratory
has successfully developed decision support systems in Australian Family Law,
we have used our domain expertise to construct a variety of Family Law negotiation
support systems.
Family Winner uses a variety of artificial intelligence and game theoretic techniques
to advise upon structuring the mediation process and advising disputants upon
possible trade-offs. Heuristic utility functions were developed from cases supplied to
us by he Australian Institute of Family Studies. Family Winner operates best when it
is possible to allocate points to issues, and creative decision-making is not required.
Whilst conducting an evaluation of the Family Winner system, we observed that
Family Winner, in focusing upon providing advice with regard to bargaining, had neglected
considering issues of justice. In a domain such as Family Law, issues of justice
are of paramount concern. This indicates that use of negotiation support systems
should be limited to domains in which principles of equity do not conflict with user
satisfaction.
When Family Winner was used in a variety of other negotiation domains (international
disputes, enterprise bargaining and company mergers) the advice offered
strongly resembled the eventual negotiated outcome.