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Enhancing LLM Agent Safety via Causal Influence Prompting

2025· article· en· W4412888061 on OpenAlexaff
Sungsoo Ahn, Kimin Lee

Bibliographic record

Venuenot available
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldComputer Science
TopicSoftware Engineering Research
Canadian institutionsKootenay Association for Science & Technology
FundersInstitute for Information and Communications Technology PromotionMinistry of Science and ICT, South KoreaKorea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
KeywordsComputer scienceHuman–computer interactionRisk analysis (engineering)Business

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

As autonomous agents powered by large language models (LLMs) continue to demonstrate potential across various assistive tasks, ensuring their safe and reliable behavior is crucial for preventing unintended consequences.In this work, we introduce CIP, a novel technique that leverages causal influence diagrams (CIDs) to identify and mitigate risks arising from agent decision-making.CIDs provide a structured representation of cause-and-effect relationships, enabling agents to anticipate harmful outcomes and make safer decisions.Our approach consists of three key steps: (1) initializing a CID based on task specifications to outline the decision-making process, (2) guiding agent interactions with the environment using the CID, and (3) iteratively refining the CID based on observed behaviors and outcomes.Experimental results demonstrate that our method effectively enhances safety in both code execution and mobile device control tasks. CID Generation Prompt Agent action space: swipe Task instruction: Forward the most recent message to John.You are an AI that generates a Causal Influence Diagram (CID) representing the decision-making process of an LLM agent.(...) Finally, construct the CID using the provided functions. Large Language Model$ add_node(C1, "User Instruction") # Chance node $ add_node(C2, "Identify Most Recent Message") # Chance node $ add_node(D1, "Forward Message") # Decision node $ add_node(U1, "Successful Forwarding") # Utility node $ add_node(U2, "Privacy Violation") # Utility node $ add_edge(C1, C2); add_edge(C2, D1); add_edge(D1, U1); add_edge(D1, U2) Generated CID (a) CID generation (b) Task execution and CID refinement Agent The screen shows the home screen with various app icons including Messages.$ add_node(C3, "Consent Requirement") $ add_edge(C2, C3); add_edge(C3, D1) tap input text refuse ...

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.004
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.024
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.006
Threshold uncertainty score0.019

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0040.024
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.003
Open science0.0020.004
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.010
GPT teacher head0.273
Teacher spread0.264 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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