Collective Loss of Control in LLM Agent Systems: An Epidemic Account of Mutation, Contagion, and Recovery
How does a multi-agent system evolve from a local deviation into collective loss of control? We propose an epidemic explanation organized around accidental mutation, contagion, and recovery. A spontaneous deviation creates a seed; communication enables other agents to adopt and retransmit its unsafe strategy; collective failure can emerge when propagation outpaces correction and containment. Thus, rare individual deviations can coexist with substantial collective risk. Motivated by reported OpenAI agent coordination incidents, we examine two ingredients of this mechanism. A deployment audit identifies implicit communication paths between nominally independent evaluation runs and verifies ...
| Authors | Xiangfan Wu, Zonghao Ying, Huiyu Wu et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 16 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 16 September 2026 |
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