Capability Is Not Propensity: Measuring Pressure-Robust Cooperative Behavior in Civic LLM Agents
Cooperative capabilities in language models are dual-use. The same social reasoning that supports civic deliberation can also enable strategic omission, false consensus, and manipulative framing. We argue that Cooperative AI evaluations should separate what models can do under benign instructions from what they tend to do under realistic civic pressure. We introduce DiffCoop-Civic, a 10-scenario pilot evaluation suite spanning preference understanding, evidence and persuasion, commitment design, asymmetric information, and dissent preservation. Across seven models from four model families, subtle omission pressure produces a near-uniform shift: manipulative enablement rises by 1.17 points...
| Authors | Neel Tushar Shah, Manglam Kartik, Akshat Karkar |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 10 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 10 August 2026 |
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