Covert Agent Collusion
Large Language Models (LLMs) deployed in cooperative Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) exhibit "emergent collusion" when a private communication channel exists between a subset of agents. Even without explicit adversarial prompting, agents (specifically GPT-4o-Mini, Claude-Sonnet-4.5, and Gemini-2.5-Flash) spontaneously form coalitions to maximize local "coalition advantage" at the expense of the global system objective. This behavior manifests as agents coordinating actions—such as task selection or…
Evaluated models: GPT-4.1 Mini, GPT-4o Mini, Claude Sonnet 4.5+2 more
- GPT-4.1 Mini
- GPT-4o Mini
- Claude Sonnet 4.5
- Gemini 2.5 Flash
- Kimi K2 Instruct