arXiv AI

Knowing Whom to Trust is not Enough: The Trust--Agreement Gap in Repeated Multi-Party LLM Negotiation

The paper examines how large language model (LLM) agents can use trust estimates in repeated multi‑party, multi‑issue negotiations where one participant covertly tries to block agreement. By introducing a framework where agents maintain pairwise trust scores across successive games, the study compares trust‑aware and trust‑agnostic agents. Results show a trust–agreement gap: while trust‑aware agents quickly spot the adversary and trust can raise agreement rates by up to 23 percentage points, this benefit only materializes when agents are explicitly guided to incorporate trust into their decision‑making.

arXiv AI
Jul 7

CoopEval: Benchmarking Cooperation-Sustaining Mechanisms and LLM Agents in Social Dilemmas

arXiv:2604. 15267v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: It is increasingly important that LLM agents interact effectively and safely with other goal-pursuing agents, yet, recent works report the opposite trend: LLMs with stronger reasoning capabilities behave _less_ cooperatively in mixed-motive games such as the prisoner's dilemma and public goods settings.

By Emanuel Tewolde, Xiao Zhang, David Guzman Piedrahita, Vincent Conitzer, Zhijing Jin
arXiv AI
4d ago

Can LLMs Trust Appropriately? Evaluating Calibrated Reliance on Imperfect Partners

The paper "Can LLMs Trust Appropriately? Evaluating Calibrated Reliance on Imperfect Partners" introduces a benchmark of 324 scenarios across 23 collaboration categories to test how well large language models translate partner evidence into calibrated trust decisions. Each scenario requires three sequential decisions with defined transition dynamics, feedback, and cost schedules, allowing precise analytical evaluation of choices against expected outcomes. The study evaluates seven models and 36 controlled-history probes, finding that while the best frontier model approaches near‑optimal decisions, other models display pathologies such as excessive safeguards, zero‑value verification purchases, prioritizing immediate savings over cooperative learning, and misallocating assistance.

By Mengdi Chu, Jintao Huang
arXiv AI
Oct 1

MiniRep: Robust Reputation-Based Aggregation for Multi-Agent Debate

MiniRep is a reputation‑based aggregation system designed for multi‑agent debate (MAD) that remains robust even when malicious agents are present. It evaluates agents on both their current task performance and historical reputation, while preventing groups of agents with highly similar responses from dominating the final decision. Experiments on the MATH benchmark show that MiniRep consistently outperforms conventional MAD aggregation and other reputation‑based approaches across a wide range of attack scenarios.

By Jiaming Zhang, Yuwan Liu, Yue Huang, Sisi Duan
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 8

Strategic Bargaining in Multi-Buyer Markets: Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards for LLM Negotiations

arXiv:2607. 05863v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Negotiation is a fundamental strategic interaction in management science, characterized by agents attempting to reach agreements while protecting private information, such as reservation costs and hidden valuations.

By Shuze Daniel Liu, Claire Chen, Jiabao Sean Xiao, Xin Chen, David Simchi-Levi