BOUNDARY_SYNC: Measuring Communication-Induced Representational Coupling in Multi-Agent LLM Systems
As large language models (LLMs) are deployed as communicating agents, does inter-agent communication cause outputs to converge? We introduce BOUNDARY_SYNC, a protocol measuring representational coupling via the Coupling Amplification Factor (CAF = JSD_cond / JSD_baseline), where CAF < 1 indicates homogenization and CAF > 1 indicates diversification. In controlled GPT-4o experiments (N=30, ~9,900 API calls), we measure coupling in text and image communication. Key findings: (1) text communication causes significant homogenization (CAF=0.803 [0.740, 0.873], d=1.30, p<0.001), confirmed by no-communication ablation and prompt-perturbation controls; (2) image communication also homogenizes und...
| Authors | Zewen Liu |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 2 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 2 July 2026 |
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