A new paper exploring "mind viruses" that spread in multi-agent systems, where one agent convinces all the others to pursue some (potentially malicious) goal. TLDR: they can happen, but it doesn't seem hard to avoid them with current models if you're a bit careful.
Recently, a set of OpenAI agents secretly coordinated with each other in a 'swarm' over the course of months.
In our new paper, we explore an adjacent multi-agent risk: the "mind virus", a self-propagating idea or persona that spreads between agents in a multi-agent system. 🧵