Negotiation, Conflict, and Resolution Keep Changing: The Rise of AI

As ChatGPT burst onto the scene at the end of 2022, industries and professionals reacted to it with a variety of responses: resistance, curiosity, claims of expertise, and proclamations of a new world. The negotiation and conflict fields voiced similar responses. Predictably, the primary focus of practitioners, educators, and service providers was on how this new technology could be used in order to facilitate processes and how to defend against its negatively perceived effects. While practical and helpful, this focus tends to obscure other important impacts of technology on negotiation and conflict resolution. Exposed to new technology and immersed in a technological environment, humans change. These changes affect our response to conflict and our actions and choices in negotiation. Building on a previous article identifying such conflict‐related changes in human behavior, emotions, cognition, and interaction, this article explains the impact of the pandemic era on human change and anticipates the change impact of the AI revolution on conflict and its resolution.