Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912384666304512 |
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| author | Piao, Jinghua Lu, Zhihong Gao, Chen Xu, Fengli Hu, Qinghua Santos, Fernando P. Li, Yong Evans, James |
| author_facet | Piao, Jinghua Lu, Zhihong Gao, Chen Xu, Fengli Hu, Qinghua Santos, Fernando P. Li, Yong Evans, James |
| contents | 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. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_05171 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents Piao, Jinghua Lu, Zhihong Gao, Chen Xu, Fengli Hu, Qinghua Santos, Fernando P. Li, Yong Evans, James Social and Information Networks Computers and Society 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. |
| title | Emergence of human-like polarization among large language model agents |
| topic | Social and Information Networks Computers and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05171 |