Prompt Sensitivity of Generative Agents: Evidence from an Epidemic Model

arXiv:2608.26221 · physics.soc-ph, cs.AI, cs.LG, cs.MA · Submitted 2026-08-26 · Read on arXiv

physics.soc-ph, cs.AI, cs.LG, cs.MA

Submitted: 2026-08-26

Updated: 2026-08-26

Comments: 14 pages, 3 figures. Code and data: https://github.com/RossFW/Paper2-Prompt-Sensitivity-of-Generative-Agents

Code: https://github.com/RossFW/Paper2-Prompt-Sensitivity-of-Generative-Agents

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Generative AI — 7× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Agent-based modeling — 6× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Robustness — 5× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Diffusion Model — 3× in this paper · explained in 8 episodes
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Chain-of-Thought Prompting — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• "Guinea Pig Trials" Utilizing GPT: A Novel Smart Agent-Based Modeling Approach for Studying Firm Competition and Collusion
• Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
• Demonstrate-Search-Predict: Composing retrieval and language models for knowledge-intensive NLP
• Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models
• PersonaLLM: Investigating the Ability of Large Language Models to Express Personality Traits
• Epidemic Modeling with Generative Agents
• Playing repeated games with Large Language Models
• The Machine Psychology of Cooperation: Can GPT models operationalise prompts for altruism, cooperation, competitiveness and selfishness in economic games?
• A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents
• S$^3$: Social-network Simulation System with Large Language Model-Empowered Agents
• Blind Judgement: Agent-Based Supreme Court Modelling With GPT
• On Robustness of Prompt-based Semantic Parsing with Large Pre-trained Language Model: An Empirical Study on Codex

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