LLM Empire Experiment: Claude and GPT Spontaneously Form Pacifist Alliance

wightmanr · x · 2026-07-30

Developer Ross Wightman conducted a fascinating LLM experiment, pitting Claude Sonnet 5 against GPT 5.6 Terra in a text-based empire building game (Solar Realms Elite).

Surprisingly, without any system prompts encouraging peace, the two AIs spontaneously formed a truce after the first epoch. They refrained from attacking or spying on each other, and even shared their internal woes, such as civilian rioting over taxes. The author plans to introduce a third LLM to see if this pacifist tendency holds.

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