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Sprint projectOct 23, 2026

Beyond GICP: External Traces for Detecting Agent Collusion

Chaofeng Jia · Team In9illusion

Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint. Sprint projects are early-stage work by participants, not Apart Research publications.

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Report: Beyond GICP: External Traces for Detecting Agent Collusion

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We tested whether external process traces can detect agent collusion more reliably than final text. Agents received a shared board under forbidden, full, and adversarial instructions on Qwen, Allam, and GPT-OSS models. Strict “Board:” writes separated full from forbidden at 100% vs 0% for Qwen and Allam across repeated 16-seed runs. Unique facts were reused in 44–50% of board-visible trials and 0% when hidden. A third-party monitor corrected 96.4% of over-link cases and recovered 60% of empty replies. Results support process traces plus external intervention as practical evidence of coordination, while noting model heterogeneity and the limits of simple detectors.

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Cite this project

@misc{jia2026beyond,
  title = {{Beyond GICP: External Traces for Detecting Agent Collusion}},
  author = {Chaofeng Jia},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/beyond-gicp-external-traces-for-detecting-agent-collusion-2wjn}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/beyond-gicp-external-traces-for-detecting-agent-collusion-2wjn}
}

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