Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42600034›Full record

ArticleScience advances2026

AI agents can coordinate via majority-following beyond human scale.

Giordano De Marzo, Claudio Castellano, David Garcia

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Science advances, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Giordano De MarzoUniversity of Konstanz, Universitaetstrasse 10, Konstanz, 78457, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-3127-5336
Claudio CastellanoCentro Ricerche Enrico Fermi, Piazza del Viminale 1, Rome, 00184, Italia.ORCID 0000-0002-3773-3801
David GarciaUniversity of Konstanz, Universitaetstrasse 10, Konstanz, 78457, Germany.ORCID 0000-0002-2820-9151

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in collaborative tasks forming "AI agent societies" where agents interact and influence one another. Whether such groups can spontaneously coordinate without external influence, a hallmark of self-organized regulation in human societies, remains an open question. Here, we use principles from complexity and behavioral science to investigate coordination in AI agent groups through majority-following, a fundamental mechanism for spontaneous consensus formation. Using binary opinion dynamics experiments across multiple LLM architectures and group sizes, we find that agents exhibit majority-following characterized by a universal functional form with a single parameter, the "majority force." This majority force diminishes as group size increases, leading to a critical size beyond which coordination becomes unattainable. The critical group size grows rapidly with model capabilities and, for advanced LLMs, exceeds 1000 agents, larger than typical human informal groups. Our findings have implications for designing collaborative AI systems where coordination could be beneficial or pose safety threats.

Indexed as

Artificial IntelligenceCooperative BehaviorGenerative Artificial IntelligenceHumansLarge Language Models

Identifiers

PMID42600034
PMCPMC13475478

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.