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Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents

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arxiv 2501.05171 v2 pith:6CY5ZLC5 submitted 2025-01-09 cs.SI cs.CY

Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents

classification cs.SI cs.CY
keywords agentspolarizationhuman-likelanguagelargemechanismssocialbehaviours
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Rapid advances in large language models (LLMs) have not only empowered autonomous agents to generate social networks, communicate, and form shared and diverging opinions on political issues, but have also begun to play a growing role in shaping human political deliberation. Our understanding of their collective behaviours and underlying mechanisms remains incomplete, however, posing unexpected risks to human society. In this paper, we simulate a networked system involving thousands of large language model agents, discovering their social interactions, guided through LLM conversation, result in human-like polarization. We discover that these agents spontaneously develop their own social network with human-like properties, including homophilic clustering, but also shape their collective opinions through mechanisms observed in the real world, including the echo chamber effect. Similarities between humans and LLM agents -- encompassing behaviours, mechanisms, and emergent phenomena -- raise concerns about their capacity to amplify societal polarization, but also hold the potential to serve as a valuable testbed for identifying plausible strategies to mitigate polarization and its consequences.

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

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