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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026

Extending Information-Theoretic Collusion Detection to Large Language Model Agents

Govindh Kishore · Team Gamma Ray

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

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Report: Extending Information-Theoretic Collusion Detection to Large Language Model Agents

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We test whether the information-theoretic collusion detector of Bonjour et al, validated on scripted agents, works on LLM agents. Gemma, Mistral and Qwen played 1000 rounds of three-player Rock-Paper-Scissors in three model configurations. With no collusion instruction, no pair was flagged at the paper’s fixed threshold α = 0.05. We then instructed Player 3 to help Player 2 through a shared hidden variable: each round a random character c is drawn, Player 2 plays c, and Player 3 plays the move that c defeats. The fixed threshold flagged the colluding pair in only one of three configurations, while the net influence of that pair varied widely (1.03, 0.10, 0.39). We therefore calibrate α per configuration with a within-state shuffle method. Scores above this null’s 99th percentile are treated as evidence of collusion.

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  1. Extends earlier work for collusion thresholds into LLM agents. This contribution is thoughtful and well written and produced impressive results given the short time frame. What it lacks is addressing the specific threat model that LLM agent collusion poses to markets.

Cite this project

@misc{kishore2026extending,
  title = {{Extending Information-Theoretic Collusion Detection to Large Language Model Agents}},
  author = {Govindh Kishore},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/extending-informationtheoretic-collusion-detection-to-large-language-model-agents-2zrn}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/extending-informationtheoretic-collusion-detection-to-large-language-model-agents-2zrn}
}

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