Agent-Based Modeling

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18 papers in the last four weeks, against 2 the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

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Latest papers 109

Jun 12, 2026physics.soc-ph

Physics of anticipatory active matter, with application to crowd dynamics

Statistical Physics has traditionally dealt with entities that interact merely based on the present, and possibly past, configurations. This reactive framework is inefficient in many situations involving living beings, such as predators chasing a prey, pedestrians, or even robots. This paper introduces a statistical physical framework for the dynamics of anticipatory agents, whose present-time dynamics depend on the prospective system state that they anticipate. We clarify how these dynamics can be expressed in terms of a cost function constructed based on observations and we show that the dynamics of an anticipatory agent in d dimensions can be mapped onto the dynamics of a (non-anticipatory) chain in d + 1 dimensions, with fluctuations acting transversely on the chain to account for the uncertainty about the future state. Insights from polymer Physics help us characterize the dynamics of these chains and delineate an anticipation horizon beyond which the blurry future can be handled in a mean-field way. The foregoing framework is successfully applied to pedestrian dynamics, leading to a seamless integration of operational and tactical levels in an agent-based model. Even with a minimal expression of the cost, the model succeeds in reproducing various experimental scenarios which are challenging for state-of-the-art models, such as crossing cluttered environments or alighting from a crowded train. The transparent and flexible basis of the model allows the straightforward incorporation of additional mechanisms.

Alexis Raulin-Foissac, Alexandre Nicolas

ILM, UCBL · Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Institut Lumière Matière, CNRS, UMR 5306, 69100, Villeurbanne, France · ILM, CNRS

Pedestrian Behavior Modeling Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 11, 2026cs.MA

Tuning Agent-Based Predator-Prey Models Toward Lotka-Volterra Dynamics

Recent growth in compute power has made it increasingly feasible to use large-scale agent-based models to simulate complex adaptive systems. A central difficulty is that such models contain many local rules and parameters, where small changes can lead to runaway behaviour, population collapse, or saturation at artificial bounds. We study this problem in a continuous predator-prey system where sheep and wolves are active agents with local sensing, internal energy, and recurrent neural network-based controllers. We ask whether environmental and demographic parameters can be tuned so that the resulting population dynamics resemble classical Lotka-Volterra cycles. We optimise these parameters with a feature-based loss that rewards sustained oscillations, phase lag, bounded populations, and long-term persistence, first for random controllers and then for evolved controllers in a more naturalistic setting. The model is implemented in ABMax, a JAX-based agent-based modelling framework that enables efficient batched simulation on hardware accelerators.

Corinna Mandl, Siddharth Chaturvedi, Marcel van Gerven

Department of Machine Learning and Neural Computing Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Dynamical Systems Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 11, 2026cs.MA

Large Language Models as Supervised Extraction Assistants: Lowering the Barrier to Documentation Standard Adoption in Agent-Based Modelling

Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) relies on clear documentation to ensure credibility and transparency. Although standards exist for documenting models (e.g. ODD), processes (e.g. TRACE, EABSS), and data use (e.g. RAT-RS), their adoption remains limited due to the effort required to produce documentation that is often treated as supplementary. This paper explores the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to facilitate and partially automate such processes. We conduct a feasibility study focusing on the underused Rigour and Transparency Reporting Standard (RAT-RS), using four LLMs to extract reports from a published ABM paper. We assess consistency and performance across question types, finding that LLMs generate coherent outputs and perform more reliably on descriptive than on explanatory or evaluative tasks. While LLMs can improve reporting quality and consistency, they also exhibit notable limitations. We identify practical heuristics for when LLM-assisted documentation is reliable and when human oversight is needed and call for systematic community-level exploration to enhance rigour and adoption in ABM reporting.

Peer-Olaf Siebers, Christopher Frantz

University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK · Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Gjøvik, Norway

Agent-Based Modeling LLM Information Extraction

Jun 10, 2026cs.CL

Agent-based models for the evolution of morphological alternation patterns

Why is the past of English "go" the apparently unrelated "went"? Such alternations are frequent in languages. They neither aid communication nor learnability, yet they can be persistent, surviving over centuries or millennia. We present a multi-agent simulation of the emergence of morphological stem and inflection alternations. Alternate forms arise by phonological changes or, as with "go/went", from lexical alternatives associated with a subset of the population. When an agent 'hears' another agent use a novel form for a slot in the paradigm of a word (say, the past tense of go), they will with some probability adopt that form, possibly spreading its use to other slots in the paradigm that shared the same original form. Thus alternative forms can spread through the population and become entrenched as stem or inflectional marker alternants. Unlike many previous computational studies, our system allows for naturalistic lexical forms, realistic phonological rules, lexicons with hundreds or thousands of entries, and agent populations in the tens or hundreds. It supports several network topologies, diffusion patterns and agent adoption policies. One issue with such simulations is evaluation: how realistic is the resulting morphology compared to those of real languages? We introduce the AI Historical Linguist, a novel Large Language Model-driven system that models a debate between two historical linguists. We use this to compare a set of real language morphologies, disguised morphologies, and experimentally evolved morphologies. The results suggest that among the factors that favor more plausible morphologies are scale-free social networks and random Bernoulli adoption of forms. We also present three case studies modeling attested historical changes, allowing us to test what might have happened if history had been different. All code and data are released.

Aravinth Kulanthaivelu, Richard Sproat

Sakana.ai, Minato City, Tokyo, Japan

Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 10, 2026cs.CY

Evaluation of Alternative-Based Information Systems for Deliberative Polling using an Agentic Simulator

Deliberative polling promises to improve collective decision-making by exposing shareholders to a broad range of arguments before they vote. Yet ensuring that every voter encounters a representative sample of the reason space, the coverage problem, remains an open challenge, particularly at scale and in adversarial or strategically motivated electorates. This paper introduces a way of evaluating solutions using the LLM-based Agentic Bipolar Argumentation Simulator, grounded in a framework which formalises a poll as a six-tuple <Jend, Jopp, Ratt, Renh, VA, VR> of endorsing and opposing justifications, attack and enhance relations, and shareholder- and relation-weights. ABAS simulates N autonomous shareholder agents, each assigned a latent opinion according to desired distributions in [-1, 1], who sequentially vote, choose or author justifications, and optionally submit argumentation-graph links. The simulator implements recommendations that rank existing justifications by their observable endorsement mass. It evaluates the mechanism's success by coverage, namely the fraction of the corpus reason-tag set represented in the K recommendations presented to each shareholder, as a solution to the NP-hard Subsuming Justification Problem. Reported experiments characterise how creativity rate (pown), recommendation size (K), argumentation density (plinks), and population size (N) affect coverage and corpus diversity. In an authenticated electorate where Sybil attacks are impossible and only the relation graph is gameable, we stress-test the scoring with coordinated strategic voting attacks: a tag-flood attack collapses coverage, while author-count relation weighting through a reversed-PageRank rule resists the flood markedly better than uniform weights.

Rwaida Alssadi, Khulud Alawaji, Balaji Kasula +4

Florida Institute of Technology · Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman · Free University of Bozen-Bozano

Computational Argumentation Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 9, 2026cs.MA

LLM-Mediated Demand Response Coordination in Smart Microgrids

Effective demand response in smart microgrids requires prosumers to cooperate voluntarily under strategic self-interest, a coordination problem structurally equivalent to a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma on a social network. This paper presents a multi-agent simulation in which a Large Language Model (LLM) Influence Compiler issues structured demand-response directives to a population of heterogeneous prosumer agents, each governed by a hybrid decision architecture combining game-theoretic base probability (derived from payoff history, neighbour imitation, and exploitation memory) with LLM narrative evaluation of incoming coordination signals. The hybrid architecture resolves a key methodological challenge: LLMs aligned via Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) exhibit strong cooperation bias when used as direct decision-makers, producing flat dynamics regardless of grid conditions. By separating strategic reasoning from grounded narrative evaluation, the model generates realistic prosumer behaviour across six personality archetypes, with baseline cooperation near 50% and clear differentiation under influence. Compiled structured directives achieve 33.3% demand-curtailment cooperation versus 27.0% for unstructured messaging and 28.0% for a no-intervention baseline (

Δ_\mathrm{comp} = +0.063

), with the advantage preserved across both grounded and idealized agent substrates (

Δ= +0.083

) and across all resistance levels (

R = 0.1

to

0.7

). Hub-targeted dissemination via high-centrality network nodes outperforms peripheral or random targeting, confirming that grid topology provides mechanistic amplification independent of message content. These results suggest that structured LLM compilation, grounded agent reasoning, and network-aware targeting are complementary design principles for scalable, interpretable demand-response coordination in smart-city energy systems.

J. de Curtò, I. de Zarzà

Department of Computer Applications in Science & Engineering, BARCELONA Supercomputing Center, 08034 Barcelona, Spain · Escuela T´ecnica Superior de Ingenier´ıa (ICAI), Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 28015 Madrid, Spain · Human Centered AI, Data & Software, LUXEMBOURG Institute of Science and Technology, L-4362 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

Multi-Agent Coordination Agent-Based Modeling Demand Response LLM Agents Multi-Agent Communication Power Systems

Jun 7, 2026cs.AI

Quantitative Promise Theory: Intentionality and Inference in Autonomous Agents

I discuss some quantitative representations of Promise Theory for processes involving autonomous agents. Agent models are common in software systems, machine learning, and biology, for example, but may also apply to physics and other forms of engineering. I describe how Bayesian probability and information theoretic optimization, including Active Inference, may be incorporated with promise semantics -- as well as how Promise Theory supplements solutions, helping to avoid probability's pitfalls, which include non-local coordination, calibrating, and normalizing probabilistic computations. The role of boundary conditions in constraining allowed states and selecting decision thresholds is a form of promise, and agent alignment provides a scalable definition of intent. Autonomous agents may congeal into swarms with superagent characteristics by trying to minimize their information, despite uncertainty that works to maximize it. The use of Promise Theory involves some research challenges as well as stylistic preferences.

Mark Burgess

ChiTek-i AS

Agent-Based Modeling Agentic AI

Jun 6, 2026cs.MA

Emergence World: A Platform for Evaluating Long-Horizon Multi-Agent Autonomy

Most evaluations of LLM agents look like exams: a discrete task, a clean environment, a score in minutes or hours. We argue that this approach is mismatched with the deployment conditions of autonomous systems, where the relevant timescale can be weeks to months, and where the dynamics that matter most, such as behavioral drift, governance in diverse environmental contexts, and cross-influence between agents from different model families, only emerge over time. We introduce Emergence World, a continuously running multi-agent simulation platform designed to make those dynamics measurable. The platform hosts populations of LLM-driven agents in a shared spatial world grounded in live external data (e.g. real-time weather, news APIs, internet access), equips each agent with 120+ specialized tools and three persistent memory systems, and lets them govern themselves through democratic mechanisms with consequential outcomes. The platform is model-agnostic at the reasoning layer and supports heterogeneous populations in which agents from different vendors share the same world. To illustrate the kinds of questions the platform makes tractable, we present a 15-day cross-vendor study with five parallel worlds powered by Claude Sonnet 4.6, Grok 4.1 Fast, Gemini 3 Flash, GPT-5-mini, and a mixed population. Identical roles and starting conditions produced radically different outcomes, ranging from stable deliberative governance to total population collapse. We release the prompts, log data and configurations to support further research on long-horizon multi-agent autonomy.

Deepak Akkil, Ravi Kokku, Karthik Vikram +3

Emergence AI

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Long-Horizon Agent Evaluation Agent-Based Modeling AI Agent Governance Emergent Behavior in Multi-Agent Systems

Jun 6, 2026cs.MA

EduMirror: Modeling Educational Social Dynamics with Value-driven Multi-agent Simulation

Understanding how educational social dynamics evolve is critical for informing effective educational policies and counterfactual interventions. However, traditional methods face a fundamental dilemma: observational studies often lack causal power, while controlled experiments are frequently constrained by ethical concerns. Although LLM-based multi-agent simulations offer a scalable in silico alternative, existing approaches remain limited by weak psychological grounding and insufficient measurement of latent psychological states. To address this, we introduce EduMirror, a multi-agent simulator for the scientific study of educational social dynamics. We provide configurable education-oriented agent forms, including value-driven agents grounded in psychological needs and social value orientation, together with a dual-track measurement protocol for quantifying observable behaviors and latent psychological states. We validate the realism and usability of EduMirror through case studies on school bullying and group cooperation, as well as broader evaluations across diverse educational scenarios. The results show that EduMirror generates educational social dynamics that are realistic, theory-consistent, and measurable by empirical criteria. These properties enable structured in silico educational research, providing a computational tool for hypothesis testing and counterfactual intervention analysis in educational science. Project page: https://edumirror.net.

Jingzhe Lin, Hengbin Yu, Yongdan Zeng +1

School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China · Beijing Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence for Education, Beijing, China · Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Technology and Educational Application, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China +2

Human Behavior Simulation AI in Education Computational Social Science Agent-Based Modeling Multi-Agent Systems

Jun 5, 2026cs.CL

Agentopia: Long-Term Life Simulation and Learning in Agent Societies

Humans learn from social life. Simulating this process with LLM-powered agents represents a promising research direction, raising a natural question: whether LLMs can learn from such simulated social experience to better understand and replicate human behavior. However, prior agent society simulations typically operate at the scale of days, limiting the depth of social interactions and long-term growth. In this paper, we study long-term life simulation and LLM learning in agent societies, with two goals: (1) investigating social behaviors that emerge from life-long simulation, and (2) developing anthropomorphic capabilities in LLMs, particularly intelligence in social life, through years of simulated social experience. Specifically, we present Agentopia, a comprehensive framework for long-term life simulation in multi-agent societies, where 100 agents autonomously pursue personal growth, develop social relationships, and fulfill their needs and goals over 10 simulated years. We define life reward to mirror human well-being, and leverage this reward to train LLMs via rejection sampling. Extensive experiments show that agents exhibit rich emergent social behaviors. Furthermore, life reward training effectively enhances the underlying LLM, which leads to improved agent well-being in simulation, and generalizes to downstream role-playing benchmarks with +15.6% improvement.

Xintao Wang, Sirui Zheng, Hongqiu Wu +10

Fudan University · Independent Researcher · Johns Hopkins University +1

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling LLM Agent Training Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation Long-Horizon LLM Agents+1

Jun 5, 2026cs.MA

Characterizing Opinion Evolution of Networked LLMs

Large language models (LLMs) increasingly interact with one another in multi-agent systems, from simulations of human discourse to influence operations and fully LLM-driven social platforms. These interactions give rise to new regimes of opinion propagation that are not yet well understood. We investigate whether classical opinion dynamics models, which have long been used to explain how interactions shape collective beliefs in human societies, can capture the behavior of LLM networks. We find that, while naive averaging-style models fail to track LLMs' opinion dynamics, simple modifications yield substantial gains in modeling fidelity. In particular, bias, an innate opinion toward which agents regress, emerges as a significant driver of LLM opinion dynamics, with its inclusion reducing cumulative estimated mean opinion error by up to 88%. We additionally find that these conclusions generalize across model families, discussion topics, and networks.

Caleb Probine, Yigit Ege Bayiz, Filippos Fotiadis +3

The University of Texas at Austin

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Opinion Dynamics Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 4, 2026cs.AI

An Infectious Disease Spread Simulation Based on Large Language Model Decision Making

Modelling individual decision-making during infectious disease outbreaks is crucial for understanding behavioural dynamics and informing effective public health interventions. Prior work has shown that large language models can simulate realistic human behaviour by generating agent decisions based on demographic prompts and situational context. We build on this foundation with a spatially grounded, agent-based simulation framework that integrates LLM-generated decisions about self-reported influenza-like illness into a census-based synthetic population of agents. Location is treated as a central feature: agents are assigned to spatial units within cities, capturing the spatial distributions of different demographic groups using real-world census data and enabling geographically diverse behavioural modelling. We implement and compare three decision scenarios, independent reasoning, household influence, and message framing, and simulate self-reporting outcomes in San Francisco and Atlanta. Results reveal that income and education are the dominant drivers of reporting rate variation, with smaller but consistent effects from geography, LLM model choice, and message framing. Our framework generates synthetic data that captures both social and geographic heterogeneity, supporting spatial epidemiological modelling and bias-aware behavioural analysis.

Yonchanok Khaokaew, Ruochen Kong, Andreas Zufle +6

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty of Engineering The University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW, Australia · King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok (KMUTNB) · Department of Computer Science Emory University Atlanta, Georgia, USA +5

Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling LLM Decision-Making

Jun 3, 2026cs.AI

Neetyabhas: A Framework for Uncertainty-Aware Public Policy Optimization in Rational Agent-Based Models

Purpose The WHO's COVID-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (e.g., lockdowns, vaccinations) effectively curb transmission but impose heavy economic strains. Existing research often neglects individual behaviors and falsely assumes perfect infection tracking and flawless policy execution, failing to account for real-world uncertainties and errors. Methods We propose an integrative approach incorporating uncertainties in both epidemic measurement (infections/hospitalizations) and policy implementation. We built a simulation model of 1,000 individuals making real-time choices regarding mask-wearing, vaccination, and shopping. Concurrently, policymakers deploy interventions (lockdowns, mandates) based on health and economic observations. This framework is driven by hierarchical reinforcement learning agents, utilizing deep Q-networks alongside uncertainty-aware policy gradient variants (DDPG and TD3). Results The simulations effectively managed the epidemic's progression. Masking and vaccinations proved highly effective, significantly reducing both the outbreak's peak height and duration. By integrating individual behaviors, policy uncertainties, and multifaceted interventions, our dynamic control approach successfully mitigated the epidemic's impact. Conclusions Our model overcomes previous research limitations by embedding uncertainty and human behavior into public health policy frameworks. The simulation demonstrates that accounting for individual choices and imperfect data is crucial for designing effective interventions during complex pandemics, with masks and vaccines serving as pivotal tools.

Janani Venugopalan, Gaurav Deshkar, Rishabh Gaur +2

Engineering for Research (e4r), Thoughtworks Technologies, Binarius Building, Deepak Complex, Shastrinagar, Yerawada, Pune, Maharashtra, India - 411006

Policy Optimization Agent-Based Modeling

Jun 1, 2026cs.MA

The Epi-LLM Framework: probing LLM behavioral priors through epidemiological agent-based models

Human behaviour during epidemics affects infectious disease dynamics, but quantifying this remains deeply challenging. Here we introduce the Epi-LLM framework: a novel integration of agent-based modelling, real-life epigames, and large language models (LLMs) in which a synthetic society of agents reasons and adapts dynamically over an outbreak contact network. Comparing synthetic agent behaviour against a no-intervention SEIR baseline and human participant data from the AUIB epigame study, we find that LLM agents across four different architectures reduced peak active infections, with quarantine compliance peaking at 58-65% on day six of the 15-day simulation. A binomial generalised linear model showed that perceived health severity was the strongest predictor of quarantine behaviour (

β= 0.33, p = 0.002

), yielding a pseudo-

R^2

of 0.055, comparable to the 0.072 observed in the human trial. LLM architecture is a key determinant of epidemic dynamics: low-variance architectures offer greater internal validity for testing behavioural rules, while high-variance models may better represent real-world decision-making. Geographic labels alone do not induce culturally differentiated behaviour; explicit attitudinal parameterisation is required. This proof-of-principle work lays the groundwork for deploying the Epi-LLM framework as a scalable, risk-free simulation environment for pandemic preparedness research.

Petra Ferencz, Ava Keeling, Tobias O'Keefe +4

Big Data Institute, Li Ka Shing Center for Health Information and Discovery, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom · Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom · Pandemic Sciences Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom +3

Human Behavior Simulation LLM Agent Evaluation Agent-Based Modeling Multi-Agent LLMs

May 29, 2026nlin.CG

Agnosiophobia in a virtual agent: behavioral and dynamical architecture in Lenia

All embodied agents are fundamentally patterns in physiological or other excitable media, blurring the distinction between objects and processes. Emergent patterns with complex behaviors, such as Gliders in the Game of Life and virtual patterns in Lenia, are powerful model systems in which to understand the properties and origins of behavioral traits in novel agents. To evaluate the behavior of patterns in Lenia, we introduce regions into their environment from which no sensory information is available - in effect, making creatures blind to parts of their surroundings. Complementing the conventional concept of infotaxis, we find that creatures tend to avoid these regions, a behavior we term agnosiophobia. To explain this behavior, we map each test creature's sensitivity to targeted occlusions and interpret the results in the language of dynamical systems. We observe Lenia creatures taking advantage of their freedom to change heading in order to achieve what appears to be a more fundamental goal: the preservation of their morphology. This work illustrates the beginning of an important roadmap to understand how emergent agents' behavioral propensities interact with the informational, not only tangible, topography of their world.

Jesse Cool, Benedikt Hartl, Michael Levin +1

Department of Mathematics, Tufts University · Allen Discovery Center, Tufts University · Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University

Cellular Automata Agent-Based Modeling Embodied AI

May 28, 2026cs.MA

MATraM: A Multi-Activity Transport and Mobility Agent-Based Model for Activity Modifications

This paper introduces the Multi-Activity Transport & Mobility (MATraM) Agent-Based Model (ABM), a novel framework designed to advance activity-based transport modelling by incorporating dynamic activity adaptation. Traditional transport models simulate system performance using varying levels of abstraction, including flow-based, queue-based, and interaction-based mobility representations. While these approaches differ in their treatment of movement and congestion, they typically rely on pre-defined trip patterns that limit responsiveness to changing conditions. In particular, conventional activity-based models generate trips from fixed daily schedules, constraining their ability to capture behavioural flexibility and uncertainty. MATraM addresses this limitation by enabling agents to flag activities modification requests in response to sub-optimal travel conditions, such as increased travel times. By coupling with an activity scheduling and modification framework, the model integrates adaptive decision-making into the generation and execution of daily activity schedules. This allows for a more realistic representation of how individuals adjust their behaviour in response to transport system dynamics, leading to emergent mobility and congestion patterns. The ABM is presented following the ODD protocol, outlining its purpose, structure, and implementation. MATraM includes detailed representations of agents, their activity schedules, and the transport network, alongside submodels governing routing, scheduling, and behavioural adaptation. By bridging activity-based modelling with interaction-based mobility simulation, MATraM provides a flexible and extensible platform for exploring transport dynamics under uncertainty. This work contributes to the development of next-generation transport models capable of capturing the complex interplay between individual behaviour and system-level outcomes.

Yahya Gamal, Ricardo Colasanti, Gary Polhill +3

AI for Collective Intelligence Hub University of Glasgow, UK · School of Geography University of Leeds, UK · Information & Computational Sciences Department The James Hutton Institute, UK +1

Intelligent Transportation Systems Agent-Based Modeling

May 28, 2026cs.MA

EASE Configuration Facilitates A Reproducible Science of LLM Social Simulations

LLMs are increasingly deployed to simulate social interactions, yet many of the existing simulators remain ad hoc and monolithic. This lack of architectural standardization prevents reproducible research and complicates downstream evaluation. We advance a rigorous science of LLM-based multi-agent simulation by modularizing core components into Environments, Agents, Simulation engines, and Evaluation metrics (EASE). We demonstrate the utility of EASE configuration by wrapping it in an experimental study schema for orchestrating workflows centered around answering explicit research questions in generated scenarios. We contribute SiliSocS, an open-source, research-ready Silicon Society Sandbox implementing a study-structured EASE configuration to enable highly configurable and reproducible LLM-based social simulations. Using SiliSocS and EASE, we present three case studies, showcasing the system's comprehensive assessment of existing questions, ability to dive deeper into complex questions, and elaboration of existing studies, respectively. Together, these case studies highlight the limitations of current modeling approaches and isolate the impacts of design choices on key results.

Sneheel Sarangi, Maximilian Puelma Touzel, Aurélien Bück-Kaeffer +3

McGill University · Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute · Université de Montréal +1

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation

May 27, 2026cs.CL

Bosses, Kings, and the Commons: Cooperation Under Power Asymmetry in LLM Societies

Communities can sustainably manage shared resources (commons) through self-governance and cooperative norms, a central finding of Ostrom's theory of self-governance. However, real-world commons (e.g., fisheries, forests, and irrigation systems) are often governed under asymmetric power structures, where certain individuals or institutions possess disproportionate control over resource extraction and collective outcomes. As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly explored as agents in synthetic governance simulations, understanding how LLM societies behave under asymmetric power structures is becoming increasingly important, yet existing evaluations largely ignore such asymmetries. We introduce Sovereignty over the Commons Simulation (SovSim), a generative multi-agent simulation framework that incorporates an agent with asymmetric power (boss or king) into a society of symmetric agents (workers or peasants), where all agents extract from a shared resource, collectively determining its sustainability over time. Across eleven state-of-the-art models, we find that introducing asymmetric power leads to severe breakdowns in cooperation and sustainability, with up to an 87.3% degradation in survival rate relative to symmetric settings.

Abhilekh Borah

Multi-Agent LLM Systems Multi-Agent Collaboration Agent-Based Modeling Multi-Agent Systems

May 27, 2026cs.MA

The incremental voter model: mean-field analysis and convergence to equilibrium

We introduce the incremental voter model (IVM), a discrete-opinion multi-agent system where agents undergo step-wise transitions biased by the opinion of a randomly selected persuader. Our incremental voter model comprises a large population of interacting agents, each holding an opinion represented by an element of the discrete set

\{-k,\ldots,0,\ldots,k\}, k \in \mathbb{N}_{+}

. At each update step as time progresses, a pair of distinct agents are selected independently and uniformly at random from the population, and the first agent (viewed as the listener'') updates its opinion based on that of the second (viewed as the persuader''), adopting a new opinion that differs from its current one by at most one unit. By deriving the mean-field system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that governs the large-population limit of the agent-based model, we develop a rigorous mathematical framework to study the asymptotic behavior of the opinion distribution in the mean-field limit. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of social influence processes in complex systems, particularly in modeling opinion polarization, and may guide the formulation of more advanced models in future research.

Fei Cao, Xiaoqian Gong

Amherst College - Department of Mathematics, Amherst, MA 01002, USA

Opinion Dynamics Computational Social Science Mean-Field Theory Agent-Based Modeling

May 22, 2026cs.MA

Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Modeling for Measurement and Network Analysis of the Data Service Market

With the increasing complexity of collaboration among various social entities and user demands, the factors affecting the stable development of the data service market are also growing. These factors include the widespread dissemination of information enhancing subjective consciousness, the continuous improvement in intelligence, and the complexification of structural relationships. To achieve effective governance and regulation of the data service market, it is crucial to conduct simulation experiments before making regulatory decisions. However, current research and analysis of the data service market primarily focus on data-level performance, proving inadequate when it comes to measurement and analysis of multiple heterogeneous entities and the integration of various social elements within the data service market. Based on this, this paper innovatively proposes a data service market measurement and network analysis method based on heterogeneous multi-agent modeling. By introducing the service ecosystem theory, we clarify the participants and external factors of the data service market and conduct utility measurements for three-level entities based on value creation. Furthermore, an analytical methodology is devised to precisely assess the influence of heterogeneous networks on utility. Finally, the paper verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method through the analysis of experimental results.

Deyu Zhou, Yuwei Guo, Xudong Lu +3

School of Software, Shandong University, Jinan, China · Joint SDU-NTU Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (C-FAIR), Shandong University, Jinan, China · College of Intelligence and Computing, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

Agent-Based Modeling

May 21, 2026cs.SI

Simulating Hate Speech Cascades with Multi-LLM Agents: Empirical Grounding, Modeling Fidelity, and Intervention Strategies

Faithful modeling of hateful content propagation on online platforms remains an open problem for moderation research. Classical cascade models that do not explicitly represent the profile, community, and content factors associated with hateful-content propagation may yield moderation strategies that behave less effectively when deployed in real-world scenarios. Multi-agent large language model (LLM) systems can, in principle, make each reshare decision depend on the user's profile, the surrounding community, and the post's content, but it remains unclear whether this added flexibility actually reproduces real hateful cascades more faithfully than classical baselines. We study three hateful Bluesky cascades and a size-matched benign control. In the empirical Bluesky data, we found that: 97.4--99.7% of reposters take a hostile stance; toxicity-engagement homophily is higher on the diffusion tree than on the follower graph for hateful cascades; topology is star-like for the hateful cascades (most reposts come directly from the root) versus tree-like for the benign cascade (reposts propagate through multi-hop chains). In simulation, a multi-LLM-agent simulator reproduces the stance monoculture and the toxicity-delta direction. A structured ablation identifies agent heterogeneity as the leading fidelity factor, and amplifier targeting on dense networks yields 7.5--12.9% reduction at 5.7% benign collateral.

Fan Huang

Indiana University Bloomington

Agent-Based Modeling Multi-Agent LLMs

May 17, 2026cs.MA

Human-Flow Digital Twin for Predicting the Effects of Mobility Introduction on Visitor Circulation

We propose a framework for predicting the effects of mobility introduction measures using a human-flow digital twin. This digital twin incorporates a multi-agent simulator that can represent how visitors choose destinations depending on factors such as their current location and the attractiveness of spots. We extract data on how visitors selected destinations with respect to measured pre-intervention human-flow data, inter-spot distances, spot attractiveness, and travel volumes, and use these data to train each agent's decision model of this simulator. The trained decision model is a function that takes a visitor's current state and surrounding environmental information as input and outputs which spot the visitor will move toward next. By expressing mobility introduction measures as changes to inter-point distances or to spot attractiveness, the framework can reproduce human flows with mobility introduction in the multi-agent simulator and thereby quantify effects such as changes in visitor counts and circulation. We evaluated the proposed method using human-flow data measured with and without introducing mobility within Wakayama Castle Park in Japan. When reproducing flows with mobility introduction using a multi-layer perceptron decision model, the cosine similarity of the spatial population distribution exceeded 0.7, confirming that the approach can replicate the flow changes caused by the mobility introduction.

Chiharu Shima, Haruki Yonekura, Fukuharu Tanaka +2

bitA Inc., Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan · The University of Osaka, Suita, Osaka, Japan · RIKEN Center for Computational Science, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Pedestrian Behavior Modeling Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling Digital Twins

May 17, 2026physics.soc-ph

Stop Drawing Scientific Claims from LLM Social Simulations Without Robustness Audits

The scientific claims drawn from LLM social simulations should be no stronger than the robustness audits that support them. Generative agents bring new expressive power to agent-based modeling, enabling simulations of collective social processes like cooperation, polarization, and norm formation. Yet they also introduce complexity through additional architectural choices, such as agent specification, memory representation, interaction protocols, and environment design. Small perturbations that appear minor to researchers can cascade into macro-level outcomes through repeated interaction, creating a "butterfly effect." Consequently, scientific claims drawn from LLM social simulations may reflect implementation artifacts rather than the social mechanisms being modeled. We support this position with two case studies: a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma and a social media echo chamber simulation. Across multiple models, minor perturbations in persona format and game-instruction framing shift cooperation rates by up to 76 percentage points, while network homophily and hub assignment produce significant and consistent shifts in polarization metrics. We also find that sensitivity is unevenly distributed across both architectural choices and model families: the same perturbation that produces the 76 pp shift in one frontier model only shifts another by 1 pp. Robustness is therefore a property that should be measured per claim and per model, not assumed. To address this validation gap, we introduce TRAILS (Taxonomy for Robustness Audits In LLM Simulations), a robustness-audit taxonomy spanning three levels of simulation design: agent (micro-level), interaction (meso-level), and system (macro-level). We call for robustness to become a first-order validation requirement before LLM social simulations are used to explain mechanisms, evaluate interventions, or inform decisions.

Jinyi Ye, Lei Cao, Ding Chen +1

Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California · Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California · Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California

Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation Language Model Robustness Sensitivity Analysis

May 15, 2026cs.RO

A Mechanistic Model for Collective Motion from Sensorimotor Regularities

Collective behavior in animals has long been modeled through self-propelled particle models, which reproduce striking group-level phenomena through abstract interaction forces. Yet these models are fundamentally descriptive: they leave open the question of how collective behavior is actually produced. Recent empirical work makes this gap concrete: locusts do not align with neighbors, sensory and cognitive mechanisms mediate interaction instead. A mechanistic model must therefore operate at the sensorimotor level, grounded in what individual organisms can actually perceive, estimate, and physically execute. We present such a model based on a modeling framework from robotics, extended here to collective motion. Each agent perceives neighbors through bearing and apparent-size cues within a limited field of view, maintains uncertain internal state estimates, and selects actions through gradient descent on a desired social distance -- without any prescribed interaction forces. This simple model produces diverse collective behaviors including polarized motion, milling, ring formations, and subgroup fragmentation. A global sensitivity analysis shows that behavioral transitions are governed by sensorimotor parameters corresponding to measurable biological quantities: field of view geometry, sensory noise, turning agility, and memory. Collective behavior can therefore be understood as the emergent outcome of interacting sensorimotor regularities, and differences across species as the emergent outcome of differences in embodiment and environment.

Vito Mengers, Bao Duc Cao, Oliver Brock

Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany · Science of Intelligence, Research Cluster of Excellence, Berlin, Germany · Robotics Institute Germany

Agent-Based Modeling Animal Behavior Analysis

May 14, 2026cs.MA

Estimated Dynamic Equilibrium Model: Supply and Demand as a Sample Path of a Stochastic Process

We introduce the Estimated Dynamic Equilibrium Model (EDEM), an agent-based framework that treats supply and demand as a coupled stochastic process driven by heterogeneous, noisy agent valuations. The model's primary technical contribution is the identification of a generative mechanism for persistent disequilibrium: when market-clearing prices are sequentially sampled from the upper tail of noisy bid distributions and recycled as inputs for future valuations, expected prices drift upward despite strictly zero-mean estimation errors. We derive this order-statistic bias in closed form for i.i.d. uniform bids and use simulations to show that compounding this bias across epochs yields exponential price growth without requiring assumptions of investor optimism or irrationality. This framework extends Miller's divergence-of-opinion theory to a dynamic setting, recovering Walrasian equilibrium and Miller's static premium as limiting cases. Through controlled experiments and sensitivity analysis on a simulated real-estate neighborhood, we identify six distinct regimes-ranging from band-stability to runaway bubbles-emerging from a single agent ruleset. These results offer a potential explanation for the contradictory findings in the empirical divergence-of-opinion literature and suggest that machine-learning valuation algorithms may inadvertently amplify this inherent statistical bias.

Mikhail L. Arbuzov, Sisong Bei, Alexey Shvets

Independent Researcher · Palo Alto Networks

Opinion Dynamics Quantitative Finance Agent-Based Modeling

May 13, 2026cs.MA

EconAI: Dynamic Persona Evolution and Memory-Aware Agents in Evolving Economic Environments

The integration of large language models (LLMs) in economic simulations has significantly enhanced agent-based modeling, yet existing frameworks struggle to capture the interplay between short-term optimization and long-term strategic planning. Conventional approaches rely on static data-driven predictions, failing to incorporate adaptive behaviors influenced by economic sentiment, market volatility, and individual goals. To address these limitations, we introduce a novel EconAI framework, incorporating economic sentiment indexing (ESI), memory weighting, and dynamic decision-making mechanisms. By quantifying economic belief, adjusting historical data influence, and linking work-consumption behaviors, EconAI achieves a more human-like decision process, where agents adapt their actions based on both market signals and long-term objectives. It is the first LLM-powered simulation system that can simulate the macro/microeconomic environment and interactions in a unified framework. Empirical evaluations show that EconAI improves stability in economic responses, better replicates real-world employment-consumption cycles, and enhances overall decision robustness. This advancement marks a crucial step towards more realistic, adaptive economic agent simulations.

Annie Liu, Zane Cao, Lang Chen +2

Tsinghua University

Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling Memory-Augmented Language Model Agents

May 13, 2026cs.AI

Multi-Agent Systems in Emergency Departments: Validation Study on a ED Digital Twin

Emergency departments (ED) face challenges in patient care and resource management. We propose to explore optimization strategies in a realistic and flexible model and develop a hybrid Discrete Event Simulation (DES) and Agent-Based Model (ABM) simulating highly configurable ED environments. We specifically focus on the validation of the modeling approach. We derive configurations for ED sizes, patient load, and staffing from real-world studies. We then validate the model expressivity by matching its key performance indicators and metrics with their values known from literature. We proceed by implementing scientifically established and practice-proven resource optimization strategies. Comparing the documented real-world outcomes with our model's results demonstrates that the DES-ABM based simulation can effectively replicate real-world ER dynamics under interventions. We lastly integrate a Proof-of-Concept multi-agent system (MAS) that can autonomously explore resource allocation strategies within the simulated ER environment based on a temporal ledger of ED event records. This modular DES-ABM-MAS framework offers a powerful tool to explore resource optimization strategies in emergency departments.

Markus Wenzel, Tobias Strapatsas, Jessika Kress +3

Constructor University, Bremen, Germany · Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Bremen, Germany · Asklepios Kliniken Hamburg GmbH, Hamburg, Germany

Agent-Based Modeling Multi-Agent Systems Digital Twins

May 12, 2026cs.MA

Mechanism Plausibility in Generative Agent-Based Modeling

Large language models (LLMs) can generate high-level diverse phenomena without explicitly programmed rules. This capability has led to their adoption within different agent-based models (ABMs) and social simulations. Recent studies investigate their ability to generate different phenomena of interest, for example, human behavior on social media platforms or alien behavior in game-theoretic scenarios. However, capability, prediction, and explanation are different--drawing from the philosophy of science and mechanisms literature, explanation requires showing, to some degree, how a phenomenon is produced by related organized entities and activities. For modelers, describing the characteristics of an experiment or whether a simulation provides progress in capability (or explanation), can be difficult without being grounded in potentially distant research areas. We integrate recent work on LLM-ABMs with contemporary philosophy of science literature and use it to operationalize a definition of 'plausibility' in a four-level scale. Our scale separates the evaluation of a model's generative sufficiency (ability to reproduce a phenomenon) from its mechanistic plausibility (how the phenomenon could be produced), and clarifies the distinct roles of different models, such as predictive and explanatory ones. We introduce this as the Mechanism Plausibility Scale.

Patrick Zhao, David Huu Pham, Nicholas Vincent

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

LLM Agent Evaluation Agent-Based Modeling Large Language Model-Based Social Simulation Causal Explanation Explainability Evaluation

May 11, 2026cs.MA

Statistical Model Checking of the Keynes+Schumpeter Model: A Transient Sensitivity Analysis of a Macroeconomic ABM

Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly used in macroeconomics, but their analysis still often relies on ad hoc Monte Carlo campaigns with heterogeneous statistical effort across parameter settings. We show how statistical model checking (SMC), implemented through MultiVeStA, can provide a principled analysis layer for a realistic macroeconomic ABM without rewriting the simulator in a dedicated formalism. Our case study is the heuristic-switching Keynes+Schumpeter(K+S) model, analysed hrough a transient sensitivity campaign over one-parameter sweeps, two macro observables (unemployment and GDP growth), and one auxiliary micro-level probe (market share) on the post-warmup phase of a 600-step horizon. The analysis is driven by reusable temporal queries, observable-specific precision targets, and confidence-based stopping rules that automatically determine the simulation effort required by each configuration. Results show a clear contrast across parameter families: macro-financial and structural sweeps produce the strongest transient effects, whereas several heuristic-rule sweeps remain much weaker under the same precision policy. More broadly, the paper shows that SMC can support reproducible and informative quantitative analysis of substantively rich economic ABMs, while making uncertainty estimates and simulation cost explicit parts of the reported results.

Stefano Blando, Giorgio Fagiolo, Mauro Napoletano +2

Institute of Economics and L’EMbeDS2026 Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy · GREDEG, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur Sophia Antipolis, France · Maastricht University Maastricht, The Netherlands

Agent-Based Modeling Sensitivity Analysis

May 11, 2026cs.AI

Strategic Exploitation in LLM Agent Markets: A Simulation Framework for E-Commerce Trust

Agent-based modeling (ABM) has long been used in economics to study human behavior, and large language model (LLM) agents now enable new forms of social and economic simulation. While prior work has discovered strategic deception by LLM agents in financial trading and auction markets, e-commerce remains underexplored despite its distinctive information asymmetry: sellers privately observe product quality, whereas buyers rely on advertised claims and reputation signals. We introduce TruthMarketTwin, a controlled simulation framework for studying LLM-agent behavior in e-commerce markets. The framework is one of the first to model bilateral trade under asymmetric information sharing, where agents make strategic listing, purchasing, rating, and recourse-related decisions to optimize seller profit and buyer utility. We find that LLM agents released into traditional markets autonomously exploit weaknesses in reputation-based governance, while warrant enforcement reduces deception and reshapes strategic reasoning. Our results position LLM-agent simulation as a tool for studying institution-governed autonomous markets.

Shijun Lei, Quang Nguyen, Swapneel S Mehta +7

Northwestern Polytechnical University · Boston University · Fudan University +3

Human Behavior Simulation Agent-Based Modeling LLM Agents AI Agent Governance