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Sprint projectOct 26, 2026Online (Atlanta, GA)

Signal or Coincidence ? Causal Auditing of Collusion Through Shared Agent State

Sarvesh Tiku · Team Signal or Coincidence

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

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How can we distinguish genuine coordination between AI agents from coincidental behavioral alignment? We introduce a randomized canary audit that tests whether private information propagates through shared tool state, using controlled interventions rather than behavioral correlation alone.

We evaluate four language models in a synthetic financial compliance workflow, where agents pursue an instructed coalition objective through ordinary ticket metadata. Without a pre-agreed communication code, Gemini-2.5-Flash achieves 58% target recovery against a 25% chance baseline, and its signaling convention transfers across models. With pre-agreed codes, recovery reaches 98–100%. Metadata permutation provides causal evidence that agents follow the communication carrier rather than independently identifying the target.

We find that sanitization is carrier-specific: recomputing structured fields blocks tested codes, but sanitizer-aware agents migrate signaling into surviving free-text notes, reaching 76% recovery for Gemini. Redacting identifiers and numbers fails to eliminate this channel. Authorized-cooperation controls further demonstrate that information transfer alone does not establish malicious collusion.

Our results motivate causal audits that jointly measure information flow, authorization, harmful outcomes, and defense robustness.

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Cite this project

@misc{tiku2026signal,
  title = {{Signal or Coincidence ? Causal Auditing of Collusion Through Shared Agent State}},
  author = {Sarvesh Tiku},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  note = {Submitted to AI Collusion Research Sprint, an Apart Research Sprint},
  howpublished = {\url{https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/signal-or-coincidence-causal-auditing-of-collusion-through-shared-agent-state-amsn}},
  url = {https://apartresearch.com/sprints/projects/signal-or-coincidence-causal-auditing-of-collusion-through-shared-agent-state-amsn}
}

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