# What Do We Need for an Agentic Society?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.03938 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03938/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 2 of its 9 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Apr 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [General LLM agent frameworks and benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/agents/general-llm-agent-frameworks-and-benchmarks/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03442/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11432/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Thirty years ago, Wooldridge and Jennings defined intelligent agents through four properties: autonomy, reactivity, pro-activeness, and social ability. Today, advances in AI can empower everyday objects to become such intelligent agents. We call such objects agentic objects and envision that they can form an agentic society: a collective agentic environment that perceives patterns, makes judgments, and takes actions that no single object could achieve alone. However, individual capability does not guarantee coordination. Through an illustrative scenario of a teenager experiencing bullying and depression, we demonstrate both the promise of coordination and its failure modes: false positives that destroy trust, deadlocks that prevent action, and adversarial corruption that poisons judgment. These failures reveal open questions spanning three phases: what to share, how to judge, and when to act. These questions chart a research agenda for building agentic societies.