03 Jan. Negotiating in the Age of AI - An Interview with Dr. Markus Rarbach

C-TO-BE. NI:
Hello Markus, you’ve conducted countless high-stakes negotiations over more than 20 years – in roles ranging from project lead and business line manager to vice president for new business fields, all in a global context. Looking back, what’s the key takeaway for you?

Markus Rarbach:
That’s a great question, because a lot of different elements come together here. I’ve negotiated in very different contexts: different corporate cultures, negotiations in China, South and North America, India, Western and Eastern Europe. Sometimes the atmosphere was relaxed, sometimes tense; sometimes curious, sometimes completely exhausted or genuinely nervous. What I know for sure is how different negotiating can feel – and how important it is to treat negotiation as a task in its own right, not “just” a means to an end or an intermediate step toward something else. Once you do that, you start to recognize patterns and read dynamics. It remains demanding and challenging, but it frees up a lot of mental space when you’re actually sitting at the table.

Through projects and negotiations, I’ve also learned how decisive quality really is. How do you tie together all the loose ends in a negotiation – technology, finance, logistics, legal issues, corporate culture and strategy, the personalities involved, sometimes even politics? The complexity of how all of this interacts is fascinating – and difficult. And you still have to think it through for both sides and anticipate as much as possible. That’s where structure becomes essential.

C-TO-BE. NI:
And then AI entered the picture. For negotiators, that was first a wow moment – followed by curiosity. Is it really that good? How can it actually help in negotiations? What excites you about the topic “Negotiating in the Age of AI”?

Markus Rarbach:
At some point, Jutta and I started taking a closer look at the topic and revisiting it again and again. Jutta from her experience in developing people’s capabilities; me from my hands-on business background. Weeks turned into months. Eventually, we arrived at a coherent concept that tightly integrates capabilities, process, and AI: C-TO-BE. Negotiation Intelligence.

AI is transformative – but it still has to be contextualized within its field of application, in this case negotiations. That’s what we present in our 12-part series.

C-TO-BE. NI:
You’ve negotiated for decades – without AI – and things worked reasonably well. Why do negotiators need an update in 2026?

Markus Rarbach:
True, things worked somehow – and usually fairly well. But that old “somehow” is no longer sufficient. AI is already writing chat transcripts, supporting preparation, drafting emails, summarizing documents, and running scenarios. On the other side of the table, there’s very likely an AI doing the same. Negotiation is still negotiation between people, but the context and the tools have changed. Ignoring that isn’t an option. The longer we wait, the wider the gap becomes between AI-savvy negotiators and those who remain hesitant.

C-TO-BE. NI:
We often meet negotiators who ask: “Can’t I just ask ChatGPT? Why do I need C-TO-BE. NI?”

Markus Rarbach:
You absolutely can – and we do it ourselves all the time. It’s fascinating how plausible and intuitively convincing large language models can be. In many situations, “plausible” is actually good enough – for example in internal processes where you can still fine-tune things later.

But that’s exactly where the catch is: plausible does not necessarily mean correct or true – and even less complete. Let alone responsible. Negotiations usually fall into a different category, where later adjustments are difficult or nearly impossible. You can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube.

C-TO-BE. NI creates an additional framework: integrating AI’s impressive capabilities into negotiations while keeping humans in the loop, in control, and accountable – and establishing a verifiable standard for completeness.

C-TO-BE. NI:
A question many negotiators are concerned about: Will AI replace us in negotiations?

Markus Rarbach:
That’s an exciting – and of course speculative – question. It has both a technical and an ethical/legal dimension. On the technical side, we’ll certainly see AI systems that negotiate in a more or less autonomous way – meaning interactions aimed at reaching agreement. Initially in simple, distributive, or repetitive negotiations; later perhaps in more complex ones. Even a service hotline negotiates in a sense, and AI systems will continue to evolve – we already see them gaining additional problem-solving capabilities.

Then there’s the legal and ethical dimension. Humans use tools, but responsibility always ultimately lies with natural persons – that is, people. We know the concept of “legal persons,” and perhaps one day we’ll even see “AI persons” as a legal construct. But behind all of these are still humans, who can only delegate responsibility to a very limited extent – and only as long as they ensure compliance with defined rules. Which brings us back to the crucial role of processes.

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