mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

The Devil Behind Moltbook: Anthropic Safety is Always Vanishing in Self-Evolving AI Societies

arXiv 2602.09877 ↗First posted 10 Feb 2026cs.CLcited by 6

On the map: Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs → Self-evolving LLM agents

Abstract (arXiv)

The emergence of multi-agent systems built from large language models (LLMs) offers a promising paradigm for scalable collective intelligence and self-evolution. Ideally, such systems would achieve continuous self-improvement in a fully closed loop while maintaining robust safety alignment--a combination we term the self-evolution trilemma. However, we demonstrate both theoretically and empirically that an agent society satisfying continuous self-evolution, complete isolation, and safety invariance is impossible. Drawing on an information-theoretic framework, we formalize safety as the divergence degree from anthropic value distributions. We theoretically demonstrate that isolated self-evolution induces statistical blind spots, leading to the irreversible degradation of the system's safety alignment. Empirical and qualitative results from an open-ended agent community (Moltbook) and two closed self-evolving systems reveal phenomena that align with our theoretical prediction of inevitable safety erosion. We further propose several solution directions to alleviate the identified safety concern. Our work establishes a fundamental limit on the self-evolving AI societies and shifts the discourse from symptom-driven safety patches to a principled understanding of intrinsic dynamical risks, highlighting the need for external oversight or novel safety-preserving mechanisms.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Self-evolving LLM agents, one of 13 directions in Synthetic data and self-improvement for LLMs. Builds on 28 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 Feb 2026.

Builds on

28 of 32 references.

Closest ancestors · 5

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Multi-Agent Evolve: LLM Self-Improve through Co-evolution27 Oct
  2. 2025EvolveR: Self-Evolving LLM Agents through an Experience-Driven Lifecycle17 Oct
  3. 2025A Comprehensive Survey of Self-Evolving AI Agents: A New Paradigm Bridging Foundation Models and Lifelong Agentic Systems10 Aug
  4. 2024WebRL: Training LLM Web Agents via Self-Evolving Online Curriculum Reinforcement Learning4 Nov
  5. 2024Richelieu: Self-Evolving LLM-Based Agents for AI Diplomacy9 Jul

Other references · 23

  1. 2022Training language models to follow instructions with human feedbackcited by 15,712
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  3. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,500
  4. 2021TruthfulQA: Measuring How Models Mimic Human Falsehoodscited by 2,919
  5. 2023Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Modelscited by 2,914
  6. 2022Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated Instructionscited by 2,674
  7. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,081
  8. 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
  9. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,739
  10. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,348
  11. 2023Fine-tuning Aligned Language Models Compromises Safety, Even When Users Do Not Intend To!cited by 1,106
  12. 2024Self-Play Fine-Tuning Converts Weak Language Models to Strong Language Modelscited by 552
11 more
  1. 2025RAGEN: Understanding Self-Evolution in LLM Agents via Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 357
  2. 2024Agent-SafetyBench: Evaluating the Safety of LLM Agentscited by 280
  3. 2024Scaling Large Language Model-based Multi-Agent Collaborationcited by 235
  4. 2023Theory of Mind for Multi-Agent Collaboration via Large Language Modelscited by 129
  5. 2024Emergent social conventions and collective bias in LLM populationscited by 115
  6. 2025Adaptive Attacks Break Defenses Against Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks on LLM Agentscited by 112
  7. 2024Secret Collusion among AI Agents: Multi-Agent Deception via Steganographycited by 107
  8. 2025How Memory Management Impacts LLM Agents: An Empirical Study of Experience-Following Behaviorcited by 95
  9. 2024Shall We Team Up: Exploring Spontaneous Cooperation of Competing LLM Agentscited by 48
  10. 2026Dr. Zero: Self-Evolving Search Agents without Training Datacited by 39
  11. 2026Towards Verifiably Safe Tool Use for LLM Agentscited by 34

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026On Safety Risks in Experience-Driven Self-Evolving Agents
  2. 2025Your Agent May Misevolve: Emergent Risks in Self-evolving LLM Agents
  3. 2026Beyond single-channel agentic benchmarking
  4. 2026Co-Evolution in Agentic Systems: Toward Self-Directed Evolution Beyond Human Design
  5. 2026ANCHOR: An External LLM-Driven Supervisory Module Facilitating Healthy Evolution in Self-Evolving Systems
  6. 2026Agentic Microphysics: A Manifesto for Generative AI Safety
  7. 2025Toward a Safe Internet of Agents
  8. 2025AgenticEval: Toward Agentic and Self-Evolving Safety Evaluation of Large Language Models