Show HN: Mediator.ai – Using Nash bargaining and LLMs to systematize fairness
Eight years ago, my then-fiancée and I decided to get a prenup, so we hired a local mediator. The meetings were useful, but I felt there was no systematic process to produce a final agreement. So I started to think about this problem, and after a bit of research, I discovered the Nash bargaining solution. Yet if John Nash had solved negotiation in the 1950s, why did it seem like nobody was using it today? The issue was that Nash's solution required that each party to the negotiation provide a "utility function", which could take a set of deal terms and produce a utility number. But even experts have trouble producing such functions for non-trivial negotiations. A few years passed and LLMs appeared, and about a year ago I realized that while LLMs aren’t good at directly producing utility estimates, they are good at doing comparisons, and this can be used to estimate utilities of draft agreements. This is the basis for Mediator.ai, which I soft-launched over the weekend. Be interviewed by an LLM to capture your preferences and then invite the other party or parties to do the same. These preferences are then used as the fitness function for a genetic algorithm to find an agreement all parties are likely to agree to. An article with more technical detail: https://mediator.ai/blog/ai-negotiation-nash-bargaining/
Discussion Highlights (5 comments)
arjunthazhath
I am unable to login
zachvandorp
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!
ttul
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.
mukundesh
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.
mfrye0
I would love something like this to use with my HOA. About to start mediation and the estimate for the mediator alone is ~$20k.