SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE
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 id
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Evidence & attribution
- arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · 2026-09-16T10:55:13.000Z
First collected: 2026-09-20T08:01:03.945Z. This is not the publication date.