Is Lying an Emergent Behaviour in LLMs? Evidence from Gaslighting AI agents in a Sustainability Game
LLMs agents are increasingly used in multi-agent settings, yet their behaviour in sustainability games remains largely unexplored. This work investigates whether lying can emerge among LLM agents in a competitive sustainability game in which agents are informed that common resources can regenerate, although regeneration does not actually occur. We develop an agent-based model of a sustainability game in which agents manage industrial, military, and ecological resources, and interact through a network. LLM agents can observe neighbours' status, declare future attacks, receive permission to lie, and access reputation information, while rule-based agents provide an interpretable behavioural ...
| Authors | Subhendu Bhandary, Federico Carucci, Christos Charalambous et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.MA |
| Published | 26 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 26 June 2026 |
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