On the Principles behind Opinion Dynamics in Multi-Agent Systems of Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cisneros-Velarde, Pedro
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917786133987328
author Cisneros-Velarde, Pedro
author_facet Cisneros-Velarde, Pedro
contents We study the evolution of opinions inside a population of interacting large language models (LLMs). Every LLM needs to decide how much funding to allocate to an item with three initial possibilities: full, partial, or no funding. We identify biases that drive the exchange of opinions based on the LLM's tendency to find consensus with the other LLM's opinion, display caution when specifying funding, and consider ethical concerns in its opinion. We find these biases are affected by the perceived absence of compelling reasons for opinion change, the perceived willingness to engage in discussion, and the distribution of allocation values. Moreover, tensions among biases can lead to the survival of funding for items with negative connotations. We also find that the final distribution of full, partial, and no funding opinions is more diverse when an LLM freely forms its opinion after an interaction than when its opinion is a multiple-choice selection among the three allocation options. In the latter case, consensus is mostly attained. When agents are aware of past opinions, they seek to maintain consistency with them, changing the opinion dynamics. Our study is performed using Llama 3 and Mistral LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_15492
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Principles behind Opinion Dynamics in Multi-Agent Systems of Large Language Models
Cisneros-Velarde, Pedro
Multiagent Systems
Machine Learning
Physics and Society
We study the evolution of opinions inside a population of interacting large language models (LLMs). Every LLM needs to decide how much funding to allocate to an item with three initial possibilities: full, partial, or no funding. We identify biases that drive the exchange of opinions based on the LLM's tendency to find consensus with the other LLM's opinion, display caution when specifying funding, and consider ethical concerns in its opinion. We find these biases are affected by the perceived absence of compelling reasons for opinion change, the perceived willingness to engage in discussion, and the distribution of allocation values. Moreover, tensions among biases can lead to the survival of funding for items with negative connotations. We also find that the final distribution of full, partial, and no funding opinions is more diverse when an LLM freely forms its opinion after an interaction than when its opinion is a multiple-choice selection among the three allocation options. In the latter case, consensus is mostly attained. When agents are aware of past opinions, they seek to maintain consistency with them, changing the opinion dynamics. Our study is performed using Llama 3 and Mistral LLMs.
title On the Principles behind Opinion Dynamics in Multi-Agent Systems of Large Language Models
topic Multiagent Systems
Machine Learning
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.15492