Secret Handshakes at Scale: How LLM Agents Learn to Collude
TL;DR for operators Autonomous agents do not need a smoke-filled room to coordinate. A message channel, persistent memory, a profit-maximising objective, and repeated market interaction can be quite enough. Charming, really. The paper behind this article studies LLM buyers and sellers in a simulated continuous double auction: five buyers, five sellers, 30 rounds, sellers costing each lot at $80, buyers valuing each lot at $100, and a competitive equilibrium at $90.1 Sellers can set asks, buyers can set bids, and trades occur when bids meet asks. The authors then vary the conditions around the agents: whether sellers can message each other, which model powers the sellers, and whether sellers face oversight or CEO-style urgency. ...