The rapid development of advanced AI agents and the imminent deployment of many instances of these agents will give rise to multi-agent systems of unprecedented complexity. These systems pose novel and under-explored risks. In this report, we provide a structured taxonomy of these risks by identifying three key failure modes (miscoordination, conflict, and collusion) based on agents' incentives, as well as seven key risk factors (information asymmetries, network effects, selection pressures, destabilising dynamics, commitment problems, emergent agency, and multi-agent security) that can underpin them. We highlight several important instances of each risk, as well as promising directions to help mitigate them. By anchoring our analysis in a range of real-world examples and experimental evidence, we illustrate the distinct challenges posed by multi-agent systems and their implications for the safety, governance, and ethics of advanced AI.
View on arXiv@article{hammond2025_2502.14143,
title={ Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AI },
author={ Lewis Hammond and Alan Chan and Jesse Clifton and Jason Hoelscher-Obermaier and Akbir Khan and Euan McLean and Chandler Smith and Wolfram Barfuss and Jakob Foerster and Tomáš Gavenčiak and Anh Han and Edward Hughes and Vojtěch Kovařík and Jan Kulveit and Joel Z. Leibo and Caspar Oesterheld and Christian Schroeder de Witt and Nisarg Shah and Michael Wellman and Paolo Bova and Theodor Cimpeanu and Carson Ezell and Quentin Feuillade-Montixi and Matija Franklin and Esben Kran and Igor Krawczuk and Max Lamparth and Niklas Lauffer and Alexander Meinke and Sumeet Motwani and Anka Reuel and Vincent Conitzer and Michael Dennis and Iason Gabriel and Adam Gleave and Gillian Hadfield and Nika Haghtalab and Atoosa Kasirzadeh and Sébastien Krier and Kate Larson and Joel Lehman and David C. Parkes and Georgios Piliouras and Iyad Rahwan },
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14143},
year={ 2025 }
}