arXiv subjects

Daniele Proverbio

Publications and source records attributed to Daniele Proverbio.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

When Numbers Start Talking: Implicit Numerical Coordination Among LLM-Based Agents

LLMs-based agents increasingly operate in multi-agent environments where strategic interaction and coordination are required. While existing work has largely focused on individual agents or on interacting agents sharing explicit communication, less is known about how interacting agents coordinate implicitly. In particular, agents may engage in covert communication, relying on indirect or non-linguistic signals embedded in their actions rather than on explicit messages. This paper presents a game-theoretic study of covert communication in LLM-driven multi-agent systems. We analyse interactions across four canonical game-theoretic settings under different communication regimes, including explicit, restricted, and absent communication. Considering heterogeneous agent personalities and both one-shot and repeated games, we characterise when covert signals emerge and how they shape coordination and strategic outcomes.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2026

gPC-based robustness analysis of neural systems through probabilistic recurrence metrics

Neuronal systems often preserve their characteristic functions and signalling patterns, also referred to as regimes, despite parametric uncertainties and variations. For neural models having uncertain parameters with a known probability distribution, probabilistic robustness analysis (PRA) allows us to understand and quantify under which uncertainty conditions a regime is preserved in expectation. We introduce a new computational framework for the efficient and systematic PRA of dynamical systems in neuroscience and we show its efficacy in analysing well-known neural models that exhibit multiple dynamical regimes: the Hindmarsh-Rose model for single neurons and the Jansen-Rit model for cortical columns. Given a model subject to parametric uncertainty, we employ generalised polynomial chaos to derive mean neural activity signals, which are then used to assess the amount of parametric uncertainty that the system can withstand while preserving the current regime, thereby quantifying the regime's robustness to such uncertainty. To assess persistence of regimes, we propose new metrics, which we apply to recurrence plots obtained from the mean neural activity signals. The overall result is a novel, general computational methodology that combines recurrence plot analysis and systematic persistence analysis to assess how much the uncertain model parameters can vary, with respect to their nominal value, while preserving the nominal regimes in expectation. We summarise the PRA results through probabilistic regime preservation (PRP) plots, which capture the effect of parametric uncertainties on the robustness of dynamical regimes in the considered models.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2025

Robustness and resilience of dynamical networks in biology and epidemiology

Natural systems are remarkably robust and resilient, maintaining essential functions despite variability, uncertainty, and hostile conditions. Understanding these nonlinear, dynamic behaviours is challenging because such systems involve many interacting parameters, yet it is crucial for explaining processes from cellular regulation to disease onset and epidemic spreading. Robustness and resilience describe a system's ability to preserve and recover desired behaviours in the presence of intrinsic and extrinsic fluctuations. This survey reviews how different disciplines define these concepts, examines methods for assessing whether key properties of uncertain, networked dynamical systems are structural (parameter-free) or robust (preserved for parameter variations within an uncertainty bounding set), and discusses integrated structural and probabilistic techniques for biological and epidemiological models. The text introduces formal definitions of resilience for families of systems obtained by adding stochastic perturbations to a nominal deterministic model, enabling a probabilistic characterisation of the ability to remain within or return to a prescribed attractor. These definitions generalise probabilistic robustness and shed new light on classical biological examples. In addition, the survey summarises resilience indicators and data-driven tools for detecting resilience loss and regime shifts, drawing on bifurcation analysis to anticipate qualitative changes in system behaviour. Together, these methodologies support the study and control of complex natural systems, guiding the design of biomolecular feedback architectures, the identification of therapeutic targets, the forecasting and management of epidemics, and the detection of tipping points in ecological and biological networks.

math-ph↗

arXiv2025

Strategic Communication and Language Bias in Multi-Agent LLM Coordination

Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents are increasingly deployed in multi-agent scenarios where coordination is crucial but not always assured. Research shows that the way strategic scenarios are framed linguistically can affect cooperation. This paper explores whether allowing agents to communicate amplifies these language-driven effects. Leveraging FAIRGAME, we simulate one-shot and repeated games across different languages and models, both with and without communication. Our experiments, conducted with two advanced LLMs-GPT-4o and Llama 4 Maverick-reveal that communication significantly influences agent behavior, though its impact varies by language, personality, and game structure. These findings underscore the dual role of communication in fostering coordination and reinforcing biases.

cs.MA↗

arXiv2025

Can Media Act as a Soft Regulator of Safe AI Development? A Game Theoretical Analysis

When developers of artificial intelligence (AI) products need to decide between profit and safety for the users, they likely choose profit. Untrustworthy AI technology must come packaged with tangible negative consequences. Here, we envisage those consequences as the loss of reputation caused by media coverage of their misdeeds, disseminated to the public. We explore whether media coverage has the potential to push AI creators into the production of safe products, enabling widespread adoption of AI technology. We created artificial populations of self-interested creators and users and studied them through the lens of evolutionary game theory. Our results reveal that media is indeed able to foster cooperation between creators and users, but not always. Cooperation does not evolve if the quality of the information provided by the media is not reliable enough, or if the costs of either accessing media or ensuring safety are too high. By shaping public perception and holding developers accountable, media emerges as a powerful soft regulator -- guiding AI safety even in the absence of formal government oversight.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Can LLMs effectively provide game-theoretic-based scenarios for cybersecurity?

Game theory has long served as a foundational tool in cybersecurity to test, predict, and design strategic interactions between attackers and defenders. The recent advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) offers new tools and challenges for the security of computer systems; In this work, we investigate whether classical game-theoretic frameworks can effectively capture the behaviours of LLM-driven actors and bots. Using a reproducible framework for game-theoretic LLM agents, we investigate two canonical scenarios -- the one-shot zero-sum game and the dynamic Prisoner's Dilemma -- and we test whether LLMs converge to expected outcomes or exhibit deviations due to embedded biases. Our experiments involve four state-of-the-art LLMs and span five natural languages, English, French, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Mandarin Chinese, to assess linguistic sensitivity. For both games, we observe that the final payoffs are influenced by agents characteristics such as personality traits or knowledge of repeated rounds. Moreover, we uncover an unexpected sensitivity of the final payoffs to the choice of languages, which should warn against indiscriminate application of LLMs in cybersecurity applications and call for in-depth studies, as LLMs may behave differently when deployed in different countries. We also employ quantitative metrics to evaluate the internal consistency and cross-language stability of LLM agents, to help guide the selection of the most stable LLMs and optimising models for secure applications.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2025

Threshold sensing yields optimal path formation in Physarum polycephalum

The model organism Physarum polycephalum is known to perform decentralised problem solving despite absence of nervous system. Experimental evidence and modelling studies have linked these abilities, and in particular maze-solving, to some sort of memory and adaptation. However, despite compelling hypotheses, it is still not clear whether the tasks are solved optimally, and which key dynamical mechanisms enable Physarum's impressive abilities. Here, we employ a circuital network model for the foraging behaviour of Physarum polycephalum to prove that threshold sensing yields the emergence of unique and optimal paths that connect food sources and solve mazes. We also prove which conditions lead to alternative paths, thus elucidating how the organism achieves flexibility and adaptation in a self-organised manner. These findings are aligned with experimental evidences and provide insight into the evolution of primitive intelligence. Our results can also inspire the development of threshold-based algorithms for computing applications.

physics.bio-ph↗

arXiv2025

Efficient and faithful reconstruction of dynamical attractors using homogeneous differentiators

Reconstructing the attractors of complex nonlinear dynamical systems from available measurements is key to analyse and predict their time evolution. Existing attractor reconstruction methods typically rely on topological embedding and may produce poor reconstructions, which differ significantly from the actual attractor, because measurements are corrupted by noise and often available only for some of the state variables and/or their combinations, and the time series are often relatively short. Here, we propose the use of Homogeneous Differentiators (HD) to effectively de-noise measurements and more faithfully reconstruct attractors of nonlinear systems. Homogeneous Differentiators are supported by rigorous theoretical guarantees about their de-noising capabilities, and their results can be fruitfully combined with time-delay embedding, differential embedding and functional observability. We apply our proposed HD-based methodology to simulated dynamical models of increasing complexity, from the Lorenz system to the Hindmarsh-Rose model and the Epileptor model for neural dynamics, as well as to empirical data of EEG recordings. In the presence of corrupting noise of various types, we obtain drastically improved quality and resolution of the reconstructed attractors, as well as significantly reduced computational time, which can be orders of magnitude lower than that of alternative methods. Our tests show the flexibility and effectiveness of Homogeneous Differentiators and suggest that they can become the tool of choice for preprocessing noisy signals and reconstructing attractors of highly nonlinear dynamical systems from both theoretical models and real data.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2025

Recent trends in socio-epidemic modelling: behaviours and their determinants

The spreading dynamics of infectious diseases is influenced by individual behaviours, which are in turn affected by the level of awareness about the epidemic. Modelling the co-evolution of disease transmission and behavioural changes within a population enables better understanding, prediction and control of epidemics. Here, our primary goal is to provide an overview of the most popular modelling approaches, ranging from compartmental mean-field to agent-based models, with a particular focus on how behavioural factors are incorporated into epidemic dynamics. We classify modelling approaches based on the fundamental conceptual distinction between models of behaviours and models of behavioural determinants (such as awareness, beliefs, opinions, or trust); in particular, we observe that most studies model and interpret the variables related to individual responses either as behaviours or as determinants, with the implicit assumption that they correlate linearly. Based on preliminary empirical observations, we then challenge this assumption by analysing a recent dataset about time series of social indicators, collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. We examine the case study of Italian regions and we discover that behavioural responses are poorly explained by awareness, beliefs or trust, thereby calling for a careful interpretation of the modelling assumptions and for the development of further models, which fully account for the inherent complexity of individual responses and human behaviours.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2025

FAIRGAME: a Framework for AI Agents Bias Recognition using Game Theory

Letting AI agents interact in multi-agent applications adds a layer of complexity to the interpretability and prediction of AI outcomes, with profound implications for their trustworthy adoption in research and society. Game theory offers powerful models to capture and interpret strategic interaction among agents, but requires the support of reproducible, standardized and user-friendly IT frameworks to enable comparison and interpretation of results. To this end, we present FAIRGAME, a Framework for AI Agents Bias Recognition using Game Theory. We describe its implementation and usage, and we employ it to uncover biased outcomes in popular games among AI agents, depending on the employed Large Language Model (LLM) and used language, as well as on the personality trait or strategic knowledge of the agents. Overall, FAIRGAME allows users to reliably and easily simulate their desired games and scenarios and compare the results across simulation campaigns and with game-theoretic predictions, enabling the systematic discovery of biases, the anticipation of emerging behavior out of strategic interplays, and empowering further research into strategic decision-making using LLM agents.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Do LLMs trust AI regulation? Emerging behaviour of game-theoretic LLM agents

There is general agreement that fostering trust and cooperation within the AI development ecosystem is essential to promote the adoption of trustworthy AI systems. By embedding Large Language Model (LLM) agents within an evolutionary game-theoretic framework, this paper investigates the complex interplay between AI developers, regulators and users, modelling their strategic choices under different regulatory scenarios. Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is used to quantitatively model the dilemmas faced by each actor, and LLMs provide additional degrees of complexity and nuances and enable repeated games and incorporation of personality traits. Our research identifies emerging behaviours of strategic AI agents, which tend to adopt more "pessimistic" (not trusting and defective) stances than pure game-theoretic agents. We observe that, in case of full trust by users, incentives are effective to promote effective regulation; however, conditional trust may deteriorate the "social pact". Establishing a virtuous feedback between users' trust and regulators' reputation thus appears to be key to nudge developers towards creating safe AI. However, the level at which this trust emerges may depend on the specific LLM used for testing. Our results thus provide guidance for AI regulation systems, and help predict the outcome of strategic LLM agents, should they be used to aid regulation itself.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Resilience of the positive gene autoregulation loop

Gene expression in response to stimuli is regulated by transcription factors (TFs) through feedback loop motifs, aimed at maintaining the desired TF concentration despite uncertainties and perturbations. In this work, we consider a stochastic model of the positive gene autoregulating feedback loop and we probabilistically quantify its resilience, \textit{i.e.}, its ability to preserve the equilibrium associated with a prescribed concentration of TFs, and the corresponding basin of attraction, in the presence of noise. We show that the formation of larger oligomers, corresponding to larger Hill coefficients of the regulation function, and thus to sharper non-linearities, improves the system resilience, even close to critical concentrations of TFs. We also explore a complementary definition of resilience that can be assessed within a stochastic formulation relying on the Fokker-Planck equation. Our formal results are accompanied by numerical simulations.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2025

Media and responsible AI governance: a game-theoretic and LLM analysis

This paper investigates the complex interplay between AI developers, regulators, users, and the media in fostering trustworthy AI systems. Using evolutionary game theory and large language models (LLMs), we model the strategic interactions among these actors under different regulatory regimes. The research explores two key mechanisms for achieving responsible governance, safe AI development and adoption of safe AI: incentivising effective regulation through media reporting, and conditioning user trust on commentariats' recommendation. The findings highlight the crucial role of the media in providing information to users, potentially acting as a form of "soft" regulation by investigating developers or regulators, as a substitute to institutional AI regulation (which is still absent in many regions). Both game-theoretic analysis and LLM-based simulations reveal conditions under which effective regulation and trustworthy AI development emerge, emphasising the importance of considering the influence of different regulatory regimes from an evolutionary game-theoretic perspective. The study concludes that effective governance requires managing incentives and costs for high quality commentaries.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2025

Data informed epidemiological-behavioural modelling

Augmenting classical epidemiological models with information from the social sciences helps unveil the interplay between contagion dynamics and social responses. However, multidisciplinary integration of social analysis and epidemiological modelling is often challenging, due to scarcity of vast and reliable data sources and because ad hoc modelling assumptions may not reproduce empirically observed patters. Here, we test the hypothesis that awareness and information spreading straightforwardly translates into behavioural responses, analysing empirical data to generate insights about their dynamics and relationships. We employ such results to build a data-informed behavioural-epidemiological model that elucidates the impact of compliant behaviours and the role of centralised regulations in mitigating epidemics. We investigate model properties and its benefits in integrating theoretical modelling and data.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2025

Topological analysis of brain dynamical signals indicates signatures of seizure susceptibility

Epilepsy is known to drastically alter brain dynamics during seizures (ictal periods), but its effects on background (non-ictal) brain dynamics remain poorly understood. To investigate this, we analyzed an in-house dataset of brain activity recordings from epileptic zebrafish, focusing on two controlled genetic conditions across two fishlines. After using machine learning to segment and label recordings, we applied time-delay embedding and Persistent Homology -- a noise-robust method from Topological Data Analysis (TDA) -- to uncover topological patterns in brain activity. We find that ictal and non-ictal periods can be distinguished based on the topology of their dynamics, independent of genetic condition or fishline, which validates our approach. Remarkably, within a single wild-type fishline, we identified topological differences in non-ictal periods between seizure-prone and seizure-free individuals. These findings suggest that epilepsy leaves detectable topological signatures in brain dynamics even outside of ictal periods. Overall, this study demonstrates the utility of TDA as a quantitative framework to screen for topological markers of epileptic susceptibility, with potential applications across species.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2024

Bottom-up robust modeling for the foraging behavior of Physarum polycephalum

The true slime mold \textit{Physarum polycephalum} has the remarkable capability to perform self-organized activities such as network formation among food sources. Despite well reproducing the emergence of slime networks, existing models are limited in the investigation of the minimal mechanisms, at the microscopic scale, that ensure robust problem-solving capabilities at the macroscopic scale. To this end, we develop three progressively more complex multi-agent models to provide a flexible framework to understand the self-organized foraging and network formation behaviors of \textit{Physarum}. The hierarchy of models allows for a stepwise investigation of the minimal set of rules that allow bio-inspired computing agents to achieve the desired behaviors on nutrient-poor substrates. By introducing a quantitative measure of connectedness among food sources, we assess the sensitivity of the model to user-defined and bio-inspired parameters, as well as the robustness of the model to parameter heterogeneity across agents. We ultimately observe the robust emergence of pattern formation, in line with experimental evidence. Overall, our study sheds light onto the basic mechanisms of self-organization and paves the way towards the development of decentralized strategies for network formation in engineered systems, focusing on trade-offs between biological fidelity and computational efficiency.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2024

RogueGPT: dis-ethical tuning transforms ChatGPT4 into a Rogue AI in 158 Words

The ethical implications and potentials for misuse of Generative Artificial Intelligence are increasingly worrying topics. This paper explores how easily the default ethical guardrails of ChatGPT, using its latest customization features, can be bypassed by simple prompts and fine-tuning, that can be effortlessly accessed by the broad public. This malevolently altered version of ChatGPT, nicknamed "RogueGPT", responded with worrying behaviours, beyond those triggered by jailbreak prompts. We conduct an empirical study of RogueGPT responses, assessing its flexibility in answering questions pertaining to what should be disallowed usage. Our findings raise significant concerns about the model's knowledge about topics like illegal drug production, torture methods and terrorism. The ease of driving ChatGPT astray, coupled with its global accessibility, highlights severe issues regarding the data quality used for training the foundational model and the implementation of ethical safeguards. We thus underline the responsibilities and dangers of user-driven modifications, and the broader effects that these may have on the design of safeguarding and ethical modules implemented by AI programmers.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2024

Efficient gPC-based quantification of probabilistic robustness for systems in neuroscience

Robustness analysis is very important in biology and neuroscience, to unravel behavioural patterns of systems that are conserved despite large parametric uncertainties. To make studies of probabilistic robustness more efficient and scalable when addressing complex models in neuroscience, we propose an alternative to computationally expensive Monte Carlo (MC) methods by introducing and analysing the generalised polynomial chaos (gPC) framework for uncertainty quantification. We consider both intrusive and non-intrusive gPC approaches, which turn out to be scalable and allow for a fast comprehensive exploration of parameter spaces. Focusing on widely used models of neural dynamics as case studies, we explore the trade-off between efficiency and accuracy of gPC methods, and we adopt the proposed methodology to investigate parametric uncertainties in models that feature multiple dynamic regimes.

q-bio.QM↗