Dear Negotiation Explorer,

Welcome to issue 28 of our NegoAI series.

This week is different. Instead of a technique or a framework to copy-paste, I want to share something that's been building in my mind — and that crystallized when I read a post by Matt Shumer last week.

Matt Shumer is the CEO of an AI company who has spent six years building in this space. On February 9th, he published a piece called "Something Big Is Happening." In it, he wrote:

"I think we're in the 'this seems overblown' phase of something much, much bigger than Covid."

He described how AI went from a useful tool to something that does his job better than he does — not gradually, but in a sudden shift. He described telling AI what he wanted, walking away for four hours, and coming back to find the work done. Done well. Done better than he would have done it himself.

His post wasn't about negotiation. But when I read it, I recognized everything he described — because I've been living through the same shift in my own field.

Read Matt Shumer's full post here

Most negotiators haven't changed how they prepare. Most companies haven't integrated AI into their deal processes.

I see it in my courses. I see it in consulting. The gap between what's possible and what people are doing is enormous.

Some have tried ChatGPT, concluded "it's not that impressive," and moved on. As Shumer puts it:

"If you tried ChatGPT in 2023 or early 2024 and thought 'this isn't that impressive', you were right. Those early versions were genuinely limited. That was two years ago. In AI time, that is ancient history."

The tools available today are unrecognizable from what existed even six months ago. And in negotiation specifically, the data is already clear: negotiators using AI-augmented preparation achieve 48% higher individual gains. When both sides use it, joint gains increase by 84%. This is from my research with 120 senior executives. It's not theoretical.

Here's where I see the biggest gap: people think AI literacy means using ChatGPT.

It doesn't.

Opening a chatbot and typing a question is not AI literacy. It's the equivalent of knowing how to turn on a computer in 1995 and calling yourself tech-savvy.

AI literacy for negotiation means:

This is a skill set. It takes deliberate practice. And it's the difference between someone who uses AI and someone AI actually makes better.

From my research, I've developed a simple framework to diagnose where you stand. It has two dimensions: negotiation expertise and AI literacy.

Trap 1: Traditional Expert — You're a strong negotiator, but you're not leveraging AI. You're being outpaced by competitors who prepare in 25 minutes what used to take you days. Your expertise is real, but it's operating at half capacity.

Trap 2: Superficial Technologist — You use AI tools frequently, maybe even daily. But you lack the domain expertise to evaluate what they give you. This is the most dangerous quadrant. AI sounds confident whether it's right or wrong. Without negotiation expertise, you can't tell the difference. Overconfidence is the risk here.

Most professionals I meet fall into one of these two traps. Very few are in the Augmented Expert quadrant — yet.

'll be honest with you. I was already a big supporter of AI. I've been teaching it, researching it, building with it for years. But I didn't think generative AI was this close to real intelligence.

Then I started working with Claude Code.

For Matt Shumer, the moment was GPT-5.3 Codex on February 5th. For me, it was Claude Code. And the experience was the same: not a gradual improvement, but a sudden realization that the water had risen to my chest.

It feels like it understands me. There are minimal hallucinations. My AI negotiation agents — the ones I'd already spent months developing — improved 30% in performance and 60% in reliability once I rebuilt them with Claude Code. And they were already very good.

But here's the key insight: the tool didn't do it alone. I had to know how to work with it. I had to provide the right context — my research, my frameworks, my negotiation knowledge base. I had to know what to ask for and how to evaluate what I got back.

That's what AI literacy means. The tool is powerful. The skill is in the human.

Look at what we've covered in this newsletter series:

Next week: Context — how to give AI the information it actually needs

This isn't a collection of tips. It's a deliberate path toward the Augmented Expert quadrant. Each issue moves you closer to genuine AI literacy for negotiation — the kind that compounds with your existing expertise.

Right now, if you're developing AI literacy for negotiation, you have an edge. Most of your counterparts aren't doing this. Most companies aren't investing in it. The gap is your advantage.

But the window is closing. As Shumer writes:

"There is a brief window where most people at most companies are still ignoring this. The person who walks into a meeting and says 'I used AI to do this analysis in an hour instead of three days' is going to be the most valuable person in the room. Not eventually. Right now."

He's talking about tech. But this applies to negotiation just as directly. The negotiator who walks into a deal having prepared with AI — having analyzed the counterparty's interests across multiple scenarios, stress-tested their BATNA, generated creative options — will outperform the one who prepared the traditional way.

The data already shows this. The question is whether you act on it.

I'm not just writing about this. Here's what I've been building:

And next week, we go deeper into the single factor that made the biggest difference in my own AI workflow: context.

Create Your AI Negotiation System — Step by Step, No Code

Tuesday, February 24th | 6:00 PM CET | 30 minutes | Free

This is where everything we've discussed becomes real. In 30 minutes, you'll see how to build the system — live.

Last time, AI prepared the buyer. This time, we flip the table and build the seller's strategy for the same case. The system is the same: a no-code AI workflow that cuts negotiation prep from hours to 25 minutes.

But this session goes further — you'll also learn:

Whether you negotiate as a buyer or seller, this is the system.

Register free here

Next week: How to give AI the context it actually needs.

We've covered prompting, prompt structure, and output assessment. But the quality of everything depends on what you feed in. Context is the single most important factor — and most people get it wrong.

I'll share a framework for preparing negotiation context: what to include, what to leave out, and how to structure it so AI can use it effectively.