Causal Foundations of Collective Agency
A key challenge for the safety of advanced AI systems is the possibility that multiple simpler agents might inadvertently form a collective agent with capabilities and goals distinct from those of any individual. More generally, determining when a group of agents can be viewed as a unified collective agent is a foundational question in the study of interactions and incentives in both biological and artificial systems. We adopt a behavioral perspective in answering this question, ascribing collective agency to a group when viewing the group's joint actions as rational and goal-directed successfully predicts its behavior. We formalize this perspective on collective agency using causal games...
| Authors | Frederik Hytting Jørgensen, Sebastian Weichwald, Lewis Hammond |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 30 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 30 April 2026 |
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