# Reply to "Emergent LLM behaviors are observationally equivalent to data leakage"

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18600 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.18600/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.08948/) (2024)
- [Nicer Than Humans: How do Large Language Models Behave in the Prisoner's Dilemma?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13605/) (2024)
- [How malicious AI swarms can threaten democracy: The fusion of agentic AI and LLMs marks a new frontier in information warfare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06299/) (2025)
- [The Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions: An Experimental Study of Cultural Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.06910/) (2015)
- [The Emergence of Consensus: A Primer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.07767/) (2017)
- [Emergent LLM behaviors are observationally equivalent to data leakage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23796/) (2025)
- [The Dynamics of Norm Change in the Cultural Evolution of Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.04328/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Addressing Longstanding Challenges in Cognitive Science with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00206/) (2025)
- [Benchmarking large language model agent societies against human behavioural distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.28182/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A potential concern when simulating populations of large language models (LLMs) is data contamination, i.e. the possibility that training data may shape outcomes in unintended ways. While this concern is important and may hinder certain experiments with multi-agent models, it does not preclude the study of genuinely emergent dynamics in LLM populations. The recent critique by Barrie and T"ornberg [1] of the results of Flint Ashery et al. [2] offers an opportunity to clarify that self-organisation and model-dependent emergent dynamics can be studied in LLM populations, highlighting how such dynamics have been empirically observed in the specific case of social conventions.