Social Theory Should Be a Structural Prior for Agentic AI: A Formal Framework for Multi-Agent Social Systems
Abstract
Agentic AI systems are increasingly deployed not in isolation, but inside social environments populated by other agents and humans, such as in social media platforms, multi-agent LLM pipelines or autonomous robotics fleets. In these settings, system behavior emerges not from individual agents alone, but from the multi-agent interactions over time. Emergent dynamics of individuals in a social group have been long studied by social scientists in human contexts. \textbf{This position paper argues that agentic AI systems must be modeled with social theory as a structural prior, and formalizes a Multi-Agent Social Systems (MASS) framework for how agents interact and influence to generate system-level outcomes.} We represent MASS as a class of dynamical system of information generation, local influence and interaction structure, formulated by four structural priors anchored in social theory: strategic heterogeneity, networked-constrained dependence, co-evolution and distributional instability. We demonstrate the importance of each structural prior through formal propositions, and articulate a research agenda for how MASS should be modeled, evaluated and governed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.07069,
title = {Social Theory Should Be a Structural Prior for Agentic AI: A Formal Framework for Multi-Agent Social Systems},
author = {Lynnette Hui Xian Ng and Iain J. Cruickshank and Adrian Xuan Wei Lim and Kathleen M. Carley},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.07069},
year = {2026}
}