An Estonian technology firm, Pactum, has designed an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that is capable of bartering with employees over their contracts. Pactum says that the robot will be able to find the best deal for both parties by factoring in considerations such as holiday allowance, contract terms, and location. The company claims that its AI is'unbiased' and cannot be influenced by gender, ethnicity, age or social class. Negotiating with a robot could be less stressful than dealing with a human, the company suggested. "We've all felt stress during job interviews," said Pactum co-founder Kaspar Korjus.

What if AI could negotiate commercial contracts better than humans? This is the idea that is being tested by Pactum, a startup that has just raised a $1.15m pre-seed round from an impressive roster of Estonian tech luminaries, including Jaan Tallinn, co-founder of Skype and Kazaa, Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise, Ott Kaukver, chief technical officer of Twilio and Sten Tamkivi, general manager at Skype and chief product officer at Topia. Here is the pitch: Fortune 500 companies have collectively some 12m supplier contracts that are unmanaged. They may be too small or numerous for them to be looked at in detail by a human negotiator, so everyone is given a standard contract, take it or leave it. "It is too complicated for humans, if you are marketplace with 3m partners, for example, you can't tailor contracts," says Kaspar Korjus, co-founder and chief product officer at Pactum.