Key facts
- A 24-year-old software engineer named Maahir Sharma developed an AI agent to negotiate hotel prices.
- The AI agent successfully negotiated a $5 discount on a $108 room rate at one hotel.
- During a negotiation, a hotel representative questioned if they were speaking to AI.
- Sharma used Cursor, an AI coding tool, and Bland AI, a platform for AI phone calls, to build the agent.
- The agent was configured to ask about rates, discounts, and perks, and to negotiate politely.
Maahir Sharma, a 24-year-old software engineer, developed an AI agent designed to call hotels and negotiate room rates on his behalf. During testing, the AI agent successfully secured a $5 discount on a $108 room rate at one hotel, even after the hotel representative questioned if they were speaking to AI. Sharma used Cursor, an AI coding tool, and Bland AI, a platform that allows AI agents to make phone calls, to create the tool. He configured the agent with travel dates, budget preferences, and specific questions to ask hotels, aiming for natural conversation and polite negotiation. While not all calls were successful, the project demonstrated the potential of AI agents in real-world negotiation tasks. Sharma spent about three days building the initial version and an additional week refining its prompts and conversational abilities.