mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Machine Theory of Mind

arXiv 1802.07740 ↗First posted 21 Feb 2018cs.AIcited by 226

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Cited by 25 in LLM agents and tool use, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Theory of mind (ToM; Premack & Woodruff, 1978) broadly refers to humans' ability to represent the mental states of others, including their desires, beliefs, and intentions. We propose to train a machine to build such models too. We design a Theory of Mind neural network -- a ToMnet -- which uses meta-learning to build models of the agents it encounters, from observations of their behaviour alone. Through this process, it acquires a strong prior model for agents' behaviour, as well as the ability to bootstrap to richer predictions about agents' characteristics and mental states using only a small number of behavioural observations. We apply the ToMnet to agents behaving in simple gridworld environments, showing that it learns to model random, algorithmic, and deep reinforcement learning agents from varied populations, and that it passes classic ToM tasks such as the "Sally-Anne" test (Wimmer & Perner, 1983; Baron-Cohen et al., 1985) of recognising that others can hold false beliefs about the world. We argue that this system -- which autonomously learns how to model other agents in its world -- is an important step forward for developing multi-agent AI systems, for building intermediating technology for machine-human interaction, and for advancing the progress on interpretable AI.

Key facts. Cited by 226 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 21 Feb 2018.

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Citing papers per year: 2019: 1; 2020: 1; 2021: 23; 2022: 28; 2023: 45; 2024: 33; 2025: 47; 2026: 48.

226 papers.

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  1. 2023Large Language Models Fail on Trivial Alterations to Theory-of-Mind Taskscited by 292
  2. 2023Playing repeated games with Large Language Modelscited by 217
  3. 2023Understanding Social Reasoning in Language Models with Language Modelscited by 172
  4. 2023Generative AIcited by 120
  5. 2023Minding Language Models' (Lack of) Theory of Mind: A Plug-and-Play Multi-Character Belief Trackercited by 95
  6. 2024MMToM-QA: Multimodal Theory of Mind Question Answeringcited by 85
  7. 2023MADiff: Offline Multi-agent Learning with Diffusion Modelscited by 75
  8. 2021MindCraft: Theory of Mind Modeling for Situated Dialogue in Collaborative Taskscited by 62
  9. 2022In conversation with Artificial Intelligence: aligning language models with human valuescited by 62
  10. 2021ToM2C: Target-oriented Multi-agent Communication and Cooperation with Theory of Mindcited by 58
  11. 2021ROAD: The ROad event Awareness Dataset for Autonomous Drivingcited by 54
  12. 2024MuMA-ToM: Multi-modal Multi-Agent Theory of Mindcited by 51
38 more
  1. 2023Theory of Mind in Large Language Models: Examining Performance of 11 State-of-the-Art models vs. Children Aged 7-10 on Advanced Testscited by 48
  2. 2022A Survey of Ad Hoc Teamwork Researchcited by 43
  3. 2021AGENT: A Benchmark for Core Psychological Reasoningcited by 42
  4. 2021Baby Intuitions Benchmark (BIB): Discerning the goals, preferences, and actions of otherscited by 39
  5. 2023Visual cognition in multimodal large language modelscited by 38
  6. 2021Continuous Coordination As a Realistic Scenario for Lifelong Learningcited by 32
  7. 2021Few-shot Language Coordination by Modeling Theory of Mindcited by 32
  8. 2023Towards A Holistic Landscape of Situated Theory of Mind in Large Language Modelscited by 32
  9. 2024Language Models Represent Beliefs of Self and Otherscited by 31
  10. 2024Position: Theory of Mind Benchmarks are Broken for Large Language Modelscited by 31
  11. 2021Deep Interactive Bayesian Reinforcement Learning via Meta-Learningcited by 29
  12. 2021On the Critical Role of Conventions in Adaptive Human-AI Collaborationcited by 27
  13. 2023COKE: A Cognitive Knowledge Graph for Machine Theory of Mindcited by 27
  14. 2025Theory of Mind in Large Language Models: Assessment and Enhancementcited by 25
  15. 2023The SocialAI School: Insights from Developmental Psychology Towards Artificial Socio-Cultural Agentscited by 24
  16. 2021PsiPhi-Learning: Reinforcement Learning with Demonstrations using Successor Features and Inverse Temporal Difference Learningcited by 23
  17. 2022Any-Play: An Intrinsic Augmentation for Zero-Shot Coordinationcited by 23
  18. 2023NOPA: Neurally-guided Online Probabilistic Assistance for Building Socially Intelligent Home Assistantscited by 23
  19. 2026CooperBench: Why Coding Agents Cannot be Your Teammates Yetcited by 23
  20. 2021PHASE: PHysically-grounded Abstract Social Events for Machine Social Perceptioncited by 22
  21. 2021Model-Based Opponent Modelingcited by 22
  22. 2021Cognitive science as a source of forward and inverse models of human decisions for robotics and controlcited by 22
  23. 2021Levels of explainable artificial intelligence for human-aligned conversational explanationscited by 21
  24. 2022Mind the gap: Challenges of deep learning approaches to Theory of Mindcited by 21
  25. 2024TimeToM: Temporal Space is the Key to Unlocking the Door of Large Language Models' Theory-of-Mindcited by 21
  26. 2021CX-ToM: Counterfactual Explanations with Theory-of-Mind for Enhancing Human Trust in Image Recognition Modelscited by 20
  27. 2022Using Natural Language and Program Abstractions to Instill Human Inductive Biases in Machinescited by 20
  28. 2023Large Language Models: The Need for Nuance in Current Debates and a Pragmatic Perspective on Understandingcited by 20
  29. 2023Theory of Mind as Intrinsic Motivation for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 19
  30. 2021Neural Recursive Belief States in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
  31. 2022Unpacking Large Language Models with Conceptual Consistencycited by 18
  32. 2023The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neurosciencecited by 18
  33. 2024Mutual Theory of Mind in Human-AI Collaboration: An Empirical Study with LLM-driven AI Agents in a Real-time Shared Workspace Taskcited by 17
  34. 2025General agents contain world modelscited by 17
  35. 2022On the link between conscious function and general intelligence in humans and machinescited by 16
  36. 2022ZeroC: A Neuro-Symbolic Model for Zero-shot Concept Recognition and Acquisition at Inference Timecited by 16
  37. 2023Neural Relational Inference with Fast Modular Meta-learningcited by 16
  38. 2024A Notion of Complexity for Theory of Mind via Discrete World Modelscited by 16

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