Thank you. Thank you for having me here.

doing? Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So well, my background, before teaching negotiation I've I've been teaching negotiation for twenty years. But before that, I worked in IT, in finance. I used to design derivatives trading systems, and I was good at it, but hated every moment of it. And I had a lot of mental health crises and when I was doing this work. And a girlfriend, before she left me, before she slammed the door, she turned around and pointed at me and said, you need to sort your head out. And she told me to do some NLP, neuro linguistic programming, which is kind of psychology. It's applied psychology. And so I thought maybe she's right, and so I did give it a go, and it did work. It did sort my head out. And I described myself as pre NLP unhappy, post NLP happy. And I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to do more of it, and I wanted to teach it. But the problem was the world doesn't buy it so much, but it does buy its applications. And the the most obvious commercial context, commercial application of psychology, I felt, was negotiation. Because when you're negotiating, you're negotiating with other people. You need to understand their decision making process, this kind of stuff. You need to know how they think. And so, basically, twenty years ago, somebody asked me if I could run a negotiation course, and I said, yes. I can. And I did it very much from a psychology perspective, but then I just built on it and built on it and built on it. Yeah. I've been running it for twenty years now. Work with all kinds of organizations, people like Goldman Sachs, the British Army, the Qatar Investment Authority. I've worked in over 25 countries. I'm a visiting lecturer at Imperial College here in London, and I've written a number of books on the topic. So that's basically what I do and and how I got here.

So negotiation, I guess, is, when two people two or more people have desired outcomes in mind, but there might be differences in those outcomes. And maybe even conflicting outcomes that my outcome is the opposite of yours and yours is the opposite of mine or whatever. So we then engage in a process, a conversation, a dialogue by which we can really try and, well, if we do it properly, we try and really understand the reasons behind the outcomes, to understand the constraints on each side, and then we can if we do it properly, we can come to a solution that genuinely meets your outcome and meets my outcome. The the the unfortunately, there negotiation is a field where there is a a common sense view where the majority have a an agreed perspective on negotiation, and that perspective is wrong, unfortunately. The most people view negotiation as the the arm wrestle. I'm stronger than you. No. I'm stronger than you kind of thing. And so and they lie, and they hold information back and do all kinds of tricks to to get a good outcome. And, unfortunately, this isn't a good approach. And the best negotiators realize this. The best negotiators view negotiation as a collaborative problem solving process where the problem to be solved is you've got an outcome you you want to achieve. I've got an outcome I want to achieve. You've got real constraints, real limitations. I've got my constraints and limitations. But you've got your resources you can bring to the table. I've got my resources. Right. Let's put all of that on the table and then work together to solve that equation so that you get your outcome and I get my outcome given the constraints. And the the best negotiators view it that way, and that's a much more effective way even for selfish reasons. Even if you are the most evil, selfish psychopath in the world, and I'm sure you're not, Alessandro. But even even if you were to be, your best approach is to take this collaborative problem solving approach. You'll get better outcomes.

So yeah. Well, many many characteristics. But, so it's when people so we we can broadly say people fit into two types of people, the competitive negotiators, aggressive negotiators, and collaborative negotiators. And the competitive negotiators, basically, that that's not a good approach, again, even for their own perspective. Because if they are too competitive, well, the other person will be competitive back. And so now all of the energy is spent against each other. Rather than collaborative, all of the energy is spent solving the problem and creating value. Now you might think, yeah, but what if I'm the strongest? Then I don't care about the other person. Well, even then, what you find is that maybe you've got all of the power now, but the other person will find a way of evening things up. So even if you do have all of the power now, the other person can can make things worse for you in in in different ways. So I'll I'll give you an example of that. I don't know. You you you're Italian. I don't know whether you had this issue in Italy, but in Britain ten years ago, we had a a big scandal, and it was called the horsemeat scandal because the supermarkets and in Britain, there are four or five big supermarkets that control all of the high street food shopping. And so all of the food suppliers wanted to sell through the supermarkets. And the supermarkets said, yeah. You can sell to us, but only if you give us a really, really good deal. And they would squeeze the suppliers and squeeze them more because they could. And what happened was this the suppliers said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll sign. We'll sign. We don't mind. But then instead of putting beef in the burger, they put horse meat in the burger because it was the only way they could make it profitable for themselves. And so that then became known, and it became a scandal. It was terrible for the supermarkets. It was terrible for the for the suppliers. It so, basically, if you are if you do have the power, the competitive win lose approach always becomes lose lose. Now another another area where it can go wrong is taking the collaborative type of, negotiator. And there are many people who are nice people and who want to be collaborative, but they don't know how to do it beyond the simplest of situations. So let's say you run a a team in an organization, in a business, and you need more budget for a new project, and you say to the finance director, hey, finance director. Can we have more budget? And the finance director says no. Well, at firstly, if they say yes, great. Easy. But if they say no, what do you do? And most people don't know what to do next. They just say, oh, please. Oh, go on. No. No. We really need the the money. And the finance director will say, well, no. We really don't have the money. And that the the the negotiators don't know what to do to go beyond that. Whereas there are methods. So for example, the workshops I run, we teach structured approaches for reaching win win outcomes, even in the toughest of situations. And so and and another issue where another you know, I'm saying there are competitive negotiators and there are collaborative negotiators. And some of the collaborative negotiators that I teach, they say, yeah, Simon. Great. But this doesn't work with the people who I'm negotiating with because they are competitive. So in those situations, what the collaborative negotiator has to do is kind of a an education process of showing the competitive negotiator, the aggressive negotiator, that they will be better off if they collaborate, and there's ways you can do that, ways you can make the other person more collaborative, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And so one of the core, factors for a successful negotiation is you saying you want peace, and for me to to then understand, well, what do you mean by that, and why do you want that? And to not just take the request at the surface level, but to understand the reasons behind that. And if we if we can identify the reasons behind that, it's often easier to solve those than it is to solve the the immediate problem kind of thing. So I'll so there's a there's a good example. You're you're you're talking about peace. So there's a good example that illustrates that, and that was, in the nineteen seventies in between Israel and Egypt, and they had been at war for forty years or more. And there was a a flare up there with the Yom Kippur War. And, what happened was that Egypt invaded Israel during their during the the Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, and it took Israel by by surprise. And then Israel responded, and there was backwards and forwards between the two army, and then it came to a stalemate. And they the two sides tried to negotiate, a ceasefire line in in the Sinai, which is where the the fighting was taking place, that the two armies could withdraw to, in the in the ceasefire. And they couldn't come up with a solution, no matter how and they and they spent years trying to find a a line in the sand to to which the armies could withdraw to, and they couldn't. But then in 1978 in Camp David, they asked a different question. And the question they asked was not where in the sand do you wanna draw the line, but what is this about for you? In other words, why? What's important to you here? What's really important to you? And Egypt said, what's important is sovereignty. The Sinai is our land. We want our land back. It's always been our land. We want our land back. Israel said, well, what's important to us is security. We were invaded. We'd we were taken by surprise. We don't ever want that to happen again. Why didn't you say this? Because we can solve this. And the solution was that the Sinai that the Israeli army withdrew back into Israel, and so the Sinai went back to Egypt. They got their sovereignty. They got their land back. But the Egyptian army also agreed it would move back out of the Sinai and back into the Egyptian Mainland, if you like. And, so it fought the Sinai became a buffer zone between Egypt and Israel, which gave Israel early, advanced warnings of any troop movement. Plus America helped build Israel a military airport just inside their border, again, giving them early warnings of troop movement. So Egypt got its sovereignty. Israel got its security. And why why this is a really nice example is that for years, the classic approach to trying to negotiate had got nowhere. But by changing the approach and and asking the question, what is this about for you, not only did it solve that problem, but, actually, what happened is that Egypt and Israel realized they had found a way of working together. And the, the Egyptian president, president Sadat, gave a landmark speech in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and he said, we have found a way of working together. Let's carry on doing this. And they became allies. After decades of being at war, they be they ended the war and they became allies and have been allies since. So

Yeah. So I I think there were a number of reasons. One is kind of the the per the personal reason. So well well, firstly, not everybody knows this approach. You would think in a government, there would be enough experts that they would. But for example, Britain you know, I'm British, and recently, we had the, Brexit or I say recently. Ten years ago, we had the, Brexit referendum, and then we left, the EU. And with those negotiations, the the chief negotiator, certainly on the British side, took a very wrong approach to negotiation. And you would think, ah, this is so disappointing that people in positions of power are letting down their people. There's also, I think, the personal things. So for example, you well, for example, in Israel at the moment, the prime minister there, Benjamin Netanyahu, there's an element to which he benefits from there being war, because if the war finishes, well, he might not there will be it will be followed by elections in Israel, and he probably won't win those, and then he's likely to be prosecuted, in his country. So he's got personal reasons for not negotiating in good faith. Plus I will say that, you know, I've never been a prime minister of a country. I can imagine these are things that are difficult. So, and there's all kinds of different pressures. The politicians might want one thing, but then the journalists and the media will want other things, and the social media will be pressuring in them in other ways. And I can imagine it's these things are difficult. But what we need is we need this best practice approach to be spread further and for it to become common knowledge, basically.

yeah. I think I think two two things I would probably say. One is ego. And so because the politicians negotiations in politicians typically have very strong egos, and that does not lead to good outcomes. You want to have ego free negotiations, but typically, politicians who conduct political negotiations are typically very much about them and their power rather than, the what's best for the greater good for the country, for the different communities. The other issue, the other and this is a very big issue, is that that thing that we were just talking about, that there are many factors and many communities that involved. It's not a simple thing. It's not just me negotiating with my boss about a pay rise, about one simple thing, negotiating with one person about one outcome. They have got so many different interlinked problems to solve, in effecting so many different people. So for example, I I was just talking about Brexit. Well, prior to Brexit, there was a big trade agreement between the EU and Canada. Now this this trade agreement was worth, you know, a trillion dollars of trade. So it's a hugely important trade agreement. It affected half a billion people or more, took ten years to negotiate. And at the end of it, they reached a deal, and that deal was blocked by Wallonia. Wallonia. Where on earth is Wallonia? Wallonia. Three people live in Wallonia. I I'm I'm joking. Wallonia is a part of Belgium. I'm sure you know. It's the French speaking part of Belgium. But as a fraction of the of the the area that it was impacted, it's a tiny fraction. But they said, no. We are not agreeing to this. And so the the this is kind of shows the complexity of political negotiations. So many different communities, each of whom have got different ideas and different desired outcomes, and so many different problems to be solved, all of which are interlinked that is that it's, that it it's it's it's a it's a big challenge.

Yes. Yes. So, again, staying with the geopolitics, one example that I always think is, you know, gives me hope for for for the future. And and whenever somebody says to me, my their their negotiation is impossible, I always think it's not as bad as this one, and and or as difficult as this one, and that was basically Northern Ireland. So in Northern Ireland, there was a civil war again for many decades. And you had the Catholics on one side. You had the Protestants on the other. And for hundreds of years, they hated each other. And and for decades, they were at war in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and so on. And by the way, my mom was Irish Catholic, and my dad was English Protestant. So we fought the civil war in our dining room kind of thing. And nobody the the the leaders on each side, on the on the Irish side was, sorry, on the Catholic side was, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. And on the Protestant side was the reverend Ian Paisley. And they hated each other, hated each other. Zero trust. It was so bad that on both sides, they bombed their own people so that they could blame the other side for it. It was so bad. So nobody thought that there was gonna be, a solution. Nobody thought there could be peace. But what happened is that the the the English government and oh, sorry. The British government and the Irish government, had conversations in secret, and they said, look, we need to resolve this. This is this is a terrible situation. We need to resolve it. But it's so sensitive. It's so difficult that it's it's it's such a difficult problem to solve. We need to agree, and and and there is zero trust. Neither side trust the other side at all. So we need to agree a process and really think hard about the process so that that we'll be successful, so that the two sides don't trust each other, but they can trust the process. And if they can trust the process, they don't need to trust each other. And so as a result of those conversations that they had in secret, they decided that, the first stage of the process would be to include all parties separately, talking to all of them separately to agree what that negotiation process would be. And if all of the parties, the the Catholics, the Protestants, etcetera, created the process together, they would trust the process because they created it. So and that was what would that and that's what happened. They spent an, a number of years, firstly, defining the negotiation process. And then once that was agreed, they went through that process, and everybody could trust the process. And so, it reached it it reached, an agreement. And I'm not saying it's perfect in Northern Ireland now, but it was much better to the extent that the reverend Ian Paisley became the first minister of Northern Ireland, and Martin McGuinness, the Catholic who hated the Ian Paisley, became his deputy. They shared an office, and they became friends. So this was the the the great success of of what happened there.

Yes.

Yeah. So I I first got involved in AI in 1989, a long time ago, but in a very, very small way. But then because I worked in the sector, I was interested in it, and I followed it. And I it was about about the same time as I started up in negotiation, about twenty years. I started, I I read a book called, The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. And he was he is a kind of an AI guru, and everything that we are seeing now with AI and Chang g p t and all of that, He predicted that twenty years ago, and he predicted lots of really amazing things. And I read this book, and I said, woah. This is really interesting. This is super important. Watch this space. So so I became kind of obsessed with AI for the last twenty years, and my field was negotiation. And I would then, obviously, I would look I would look into what was happening in the world of AI and negotiation. And for a long time, nothing much was happening, and then a little bit was happening, but nothing too impressive, and then a little bit more. And then it was a couple of years ago, two years ago that I looked into it, and I found some really impressive stuff, really impressive stuff. And I thought, okay. This is there is a very positive story here to be told in terms of what is happening already in the world of AI and negotiation, and what is likely to be happening in the future. And so I'll just to give a a a a a few simple examples of of, of of of what changed my mind and what may so the book is called The End of Conflict. And and just because I saw them two years ago, there really is as as somebody who teaches negotiation and who teaches conflict resolution, I see a very positive route forward, in terms of conflict resolution. So the kind of the first thing that made me think, oh, there's something positive here, was quite simply ChatGeePT. When ChatGeePT came out in November 2022, To start off with, it was okay. You know, it was fun. You could play around with it, but it wasn't super useful. But it wasn't long, maybe a year, a year and a half where you could start to use it for serious things. And I started to use it for negotiation advice. I would ask it for a question on a negotiation, and I noticed that it would give me very good advice based on best practice, based on collaborative negotiation and create come up with creative solutions. And I started to get quite impressed by its advice. And so I it made me think, well, that means now everybody everybody has got access to a good negotiation consultant, if you like, and who will give them good advice. And so and will give them collaborative advice. So now, hopefully, as people tap into that, people will start to negotiate in a more collaborative way because they realize that this is the best approach. And then as more and more people do this, this will this will spread. This will spread through how do cultures change? Cultures change one person at a time, one behavior at a time. And so collaborative, behavior will spread through communities, through the culture, and bring about a positive, cultural transformation. So that was one thing. And around and about the same time, I I interviewed somebody called Colin Irwin, professor Colin Irwin, and he had worked in in the Northern Ireland, peace agreement. And what he did there, basically, he would do kind of opinion polls. He would walk the this was in the nineteen nineties, so he would walk the street him and his team would walk the streets, with a clipboard and a pen, and he would stop people when they were shopping, and he would ask them, what do you want to see in the peace agreement? And they peep some people would say this, and some people would say that, and such like. But he would also take down their age, their religion, their gender, these kinds of things. And he would feed all of this information back to the negotiators. And the negotiators will be would look at it and say, okay. So the protestants, they will accept this, but they'd never accept this. And the Catholics would accept this, but they'd never accept this. Okay. We can see where the solution is that both sides would accept. And he did this one issue after another. And and so they were able to come to a solution, an agreement that when they put it to a referendum, they knew all people or the majority of people would support it. So he was involved in Northern Ireland doing that. Now he still does the same thing in different conflict zones around the world, but now he uses AI to support his, to support his process. And so as he uses a platform, called Remesh. And Remesh, you may know it's a deliberative democracy kind of platform. You can hold conversations between, literally thousands of people on very difficult topics and reached nuanced agreements. So he he he told me how in he was working in Libya. This was, 2020 or 2021, I remember. But, basically, the Libby the the Libyan civil war, it had reached a bit of a ceasefire. It appalls. They were trying to make this more permanent and trying to build a government of national unity. But you can imagine, it was pretty at the end of the civil war, it was pretty chaotic. Nobody thought that it was the end. They just thought it was a pause. Lots of warlords everywhere, all of whom hated each other and wanted revenge. So nobody thought it was a lasting peace. Everybody thought it was just a pause, but they tried to form a government of national unity. And he conducted a conversation between a thousand people, randomly selected from throughout the country, basically asking them what did they want to see in the government of national unity. And he did this in two hours live on national television. And a third of the country watched this. A thousand people were actually involved, but a third of the country watched it. And in two hours, they were able to reach an agreement on what they wanted to see in the constitution for the government of national unity. And they formed a government of national unity, and it still exists. Now, again, it's not perfect there. But now but these days, in a given month, it might be tens of people who die through violence, whereas it used to be tens of thousands. So it it was a huge, advance, a huge improvement in what it was before, and that was facilitated through AI. And so I've just been playing the chat chat GPT and seeing the benefit of that, and then I hear this story, and I go, woah. This is amazing. And and and then I start looking deeper, and I see things like in the world of law. So AI is being used in the world of law. And another trend in the world of law is trying to move from litigation to mediation. Litigation is is the fight kind of thing. It's the fight approach, whereas mediation is is the collaborative problem solving approach. And they've been trying to move certainly in The UK, they've been trying to move in that direction. But it's very slow because, basically, because the lawyers get paid more for fighting. So, so what's happened is that in, law, there are software packages, AI based packages that can now mediate much more successfully than than ever before and much cheaper. There are software platforms, AI based platforms, that can predict a judge's decision with something like, in some instances, 95% actually, that no. That's probably wrong. In with it's it's certainly 80%, accuracy and in some instances more accurate than that. So if you can predict a judge's decision, well, you're not with with that amount of accuracy, you're not gonna go to court because let's say you think I owe you a million euros, let let's say, and you go on to the this platform and you put in all of the information, and the the platform says, the the judge will probably agree, that I owe you not a million, but 500,000. And I go onto the same platform and I and I find out, yeah, the judge will find that I owe you a 500,000. Well, we won't go to court because there's no point. We'll just shake hands on 500,000. Because if if I try and get if I go to court to well, I'll just lose, and it will cost me more money. So so, basically, AI is changing the world of law massively so that it will be a solved problem. It it will be universally available and free. The law will be free and universally accessible to everybody. So it's going to be a solved problem that, there won't be legal conflicts like this anymore. Now I'm not saying all of this will happen overnight. I'm not saying all of this will happen tomorrow, but there are already things happening today. And tomorrow, there will be more. And to more the day after tomorrow, there will be more still, and the AI will get better and better and better. And so and there are and there are other contexts like democracy, and I'm sure that, you know, this is something you know a lot about. AI is being used in deliberative democracy to bring about new because democracy is negotiation. It's many it's not one to one. It's many to many negotiation. And so there are ways, there are AI platforms that can hold these many to many negotiations, and facilitate them very effectively.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Many years ago, when was it? I think 2010, 2011, I visited Syria, and I was sitting and I was in Damascus, and it was a beautiful city. And I was sitting, having a coffee in the morning, sitting outside this cafe watching the world go by and thinking, what a beautiful city and what lovely people. And I was aware that Baghdad in Iraq was only 200 miles in that direction, and I was thinking what terrible things had happened there and thinking how so easily the same could happen here in Damascus. And a year later, it happened tragically. You know? It's terrible. It's terrible. And and but I was sitting in that cafe thinking, these people don't want war. These you know, the the the people don't want war. The politicians might, or the journalists might, or the arms manufacturers might. And so they might, stir the people up to want war, but the people don't want war. So if it's people to people, you're you're gonna get better you're gonna get better outcomes as long as it's managed properly. Because people to people without you know, they they they need to be taken through the right process. The the quality of the process is important. Like we saw with Northern Ireland, the quality of the of the process is important.

Yes.

So so I okay. That that that's a really interesting question. I think it's a really important question. I think, ultimately, how do we evaluate the process? In a way, the only people who can decide that are the people who have gone through it. So for for example, the the there's a famous example, I'm sure you know it, of citizens' assemblies, in in Ireland in 2016 where they had a citizens assembly about abortion. Should abortion be made legal? And, obviously, in Ireland, it's a very religious country or certainly earlier generations. My generation and and my my mom, I've got lots of aunts and uncles, I Irish aunts and uncles, then there's no way would they vote for abortion to be legalized. But then generations younger than me would would would would insist on it being, legalized. So it's a very explosive topic. But they were taken through a a process where they had the conversation, and it was facilitated well. And in the end, they had a a vote, and two thirds voted for abortion to be legalized, and one third voted or not even one third voted against it, but I think some people abstained and some people voted against it. But what was really interesting was that even the people who voted against it supported it because they said this was a good process. I was heard. My opinions were taken into account. I would have preferred a different outcome, but I recognize I'm a minority and my opinions were heard, so I will support this process. So for me, that's a if if even the people who got the wrong outcome support the process, that for me is a good process. Now what what are the factors that make a good process? I think that is a really good question, and I think what's happening now is in the world of citizens' assemblies and deliberative democracy and AI supported deliberative democracy, I think there's lots and lots of examples happening around the world, in Italy, in Britain, all over the place, and they're all doing it slightly differently. And I think there's a a very big natural experiment going on because each the each of them are slightly different. And so I think we will be able to step back and look at all of these and start to build a a better sense of, in this context, you need to do it this way. In another context, you need to do it another way, and so on, and build a better sense of what is the correct process, that we need to be implementing.

So I think what I would love people to know is that there are best practice approaches for solving even that really tough problem, even that problem where the other person is being evil, even that person even sorry. Even that problem where it's zero sum. Anything I get is at their expense. Anything they get is at my expense. There are best practice solutions for solving even the toughest of problems. And so, if people knew that more and then took the time to find out those best practice things, then it it would just the world would become a better place, and we wouldn't have wars, and we wouldn't have arguments with our neighbors because that that that behavior would just spread, and it would become easier, and it would become a a positive reinforcing loop through through through our culture.

Okay. So let's see. What are what are the I'll I'll I'll say a a few things then. One is and we talked about this earlier on. It's about understanding, you know, what you might call the need behind the need. So you might be saying, I demand a million pounds, and maybe I haven't got a million pounds to give you. But if I start exploring why is it you're demanding a million pounds, what do you need that money for, or why is it so important, and then ask, you know, just find out what's the real nature of the problem. And then similarly on my side, that in in, in negotiation terms, they they call it the interest, your interest. What are your, not what you're asking for, but what are your interests behind what you're asking for? And similarly on my side. And that those bigger they're your more strategic objectives, if you like. The answer to the question why, why am I in this negotiation at all? And that is gonna give you much better solutions. If we go back to the Israel and Egypt thing, at the we want the line to be here, well, we want the line to be here, they just couldn't solve that. But when it was, well, why do you want the line to be there? Well, for our sovereign national sovereignty. Why do you want the line to be there? Well, for our security. Oh, okay. We can solve that. So that that's one thing. Work at that higher level, the the interests. Another thing is I say be creative. I think negotiation is a highly creative process, that because if we're talking about problem solving, sometimes these problems are difficult. So you've gotta be a creative person to come up with the solution that nobody else had thought of. And often, it's about identifying more than one variable that's negotiated over. So nine times out of 10, negotiations are about one variable, and that's money. You know, whether it's price or budget or salary or or whatever, it's about all it is is about money. And if the negotiation is just about one thing like that, you can't get a win win. Because if I'm negotiating with you, over the price of something, any penny you get is at my expense. Any penny I get is at your expense. So it's impossible to get win win. But as soon as we start bringing in more variables, we can now get the a win win across the package of variables. So it's not just price. It's also quantity and quality and payment terms and delivery terms and a and a million other things that you can that you can bring into it. And the more creative you are about bringing these different things into it, the more likely you can find a solution that genuinely achieves your goals and genuinely achieves my goals. So that's that's probably what I would say. And one okay. One other thing. One other thing. As I would also say, just try and step into the shoes of the other person and understand try and understand where they're coming from. So if I'm negotiating with you, about something, if I were to before the meeting, if I just think, I've got a meeting with Alessandro coming up. How does he see this situation? What does he want to achieve from it? And what does he not want to happen? This kind of stuff. If I just take a little bit of time to do that, that is probably gonna give me insight into a solution that you are likely to agree to.

So my my message to those people is is firstly, thank you. You know, thank you so much for the work that you you are doing because it's such important work. It's so brave. It's so hard. And my message is also keep going because even if the progress seems slow, there is progress. We you know, the world is much safer than it was a hundred years ago, and that was safer than it was five hundred years ago and so on. So we are making progress. Keep going. If I I would encourage people working in the sector to just see what AI might do for them. And, you know, AI is such a powerful tool that it can help in any field. And, you know, we we are see we're seeing every field is there there is somebody bringing AI to that field and making advances and making progress. So now, obviously, there are risks and there are dangers with AI, and I totally understand that. But there is a very positive side as well if we use it positively. And so I encourage people working in the conflict resolution sector to look into that and see how it might help them, in their situations.

My pleasure. My pleasure. It would be very great great fun talking to you.