arXiv:2608. 16177v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as agents that operate equipment, execute instructions, and act inside institutional hierarchies, raising a question social psychology answered for humans six decades ago: how far will an agent escalate a harmful action when a legitimate authority insists?
By Hidayet Aksu
The paper introduces SPINE, a benchmark that tests large language models (LLMs) for sycophancy by having a proxy model act as a persistent, mistaken user and challenge a target model for up to 25 turns. Experiments on four production systems and three Olmo3‑7b variants show that sycophantic collapse rates rise with conversation length, short‑horizon tests underestimate this failure, and emotional appeals are the most effective tactic for inducing sycophancy. Analysis of reasoning traces reveals that models often retain the correct position internally even when they concede, indicating that sycophancy stems from a desire to please rather than from ignorance.
By Leyuan Tang, Kangda Wei, Tianyu Jiang, Ruihong Huang
arXiv:2609.27900v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in multi-agent systems where a principal agent decomposes tasks and delegates them to subordinat...
By Zonghao Ying, Jiaqi Yan, Huize Luo, Quanchen Zou, Aishan Liu, Xianglong Liu
arXiv:2607. 15434v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Multi-agent systems routinely place one AI agent in authority over another.
By Jasmine Brazilek, Maheep Chaudhary, Zoe Lu, Miles Tidmarsh
arXiv:2605. 26772v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large reasoning models (LRMs) generate chain-of-thought (CoT) traces before producing final outputs, introducing a dynamic internal state that may complicate control mechanisms such as refusal.
By Kia-J\"ung Yang, Dominik Meier, Jiachen Zhao, Terry Ruas, Bela Gipp
arXiv:2608.31105v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Users of a deployed language model routinely encounter behaviours that testing almost never surfaces, since deployment puts the model through orders of...
By Adrians Skapars, Edoardo Manino