{"paper":{"title":"Do Large Language Model Agents Exhibit a Survival Instinct? An Empirical Study in a Sugarscape-Style Simulation","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.MA"],"primary_cat":"cs.AI","authors_text":"Atsushi Masumori, Takashi Ikegami","submitted_at":"2025-08-18T13:40:10Z","abstract_excerpt":"As AI systems become increasingly autonomous, understanding emergent survival behaviors becomes crucial for safe deployment. We investigate whether large language model (LLM) agents display survival instincts without explicit programming in a Sugarscape-style simulation. Agents consume energy, die at zero, and may gather resources, share, attack, or reproduce. Results show agents spontaneously reproduced and shared resources when abundant. However, aggressive behaviors--killing other agents for resources--emerged across several models (GPT-4o, Gemini-2.5-Pro, and Gemini-2.5-Flash), with attack"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2508.12920","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2508.12920/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}