AI Contagion in Social Networks

Abstract:We study how artificial intelligence (AI) interacts with social communication networks to shape the stability of collective knowledge. Agents exchange information through a network while receiving AI-generated content, and AI systems retrain on the aggregate social information they influence. This interaction generates two feedback forces: an AI contagion channel, through which distortions diffuse across the network, and an AI social distortion multiplier, through which retraining amplifies past errors. Despite the high dimensionality of the environment, we show that the long-run behavior of the system admits a two-dimensional representation whose spectral radius determines whether AI-mediated information systems are dynamically stable or unstable. We characterize a sharp regulatory frontier identifying the minimum filtering required for stability and show how network topology shapes systemic informational risk.

Theoretical Economics (econ.TH); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2606.15206 [econ.TH]

(or arXiv:2606.15206v1 [econ.TH] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.15206 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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