Understanding Cognition-Induced Risks in Agentic AI Systems

Guanchu Wang, Qinuo Li, Mengnan Du, Xia Hu, Bowen Zhou

Understanding Cognition-Induced Risks in Agentic AI Systems: 17 upvotes on Hugging Face Daily Papers, #18 of 42 papers on 2026-08-18. Day-by-day upvote history.

Frontier agentic systems powered by large language models (LLMs) exhibit human-like patterns of cognition. As these systems become deeply integrated across different domains, their cognitive engagement raises critical concerns for human society that remain insufficiently studied. To address this gap, we systematically analyze risks induced by expanding cognitive capabilities, following a three-level framework defined by their cognitive scope, from physical cognition to social cognition, and finally to self-referential cognition. We study their potential risks to human agency, autonomy, and control capability, corresponding to each cognitive level. We finally propose strategies to mitigate these risks and enhance the controllability of agentic AI systems, ensuring their long-term safe development.

Paper page on Hugging Face · arXiv

Data: hysts-bot-data/daily-papers-stats and the Daily Papers API. Open data: tardellirs/paper-pulse-data. Sister project: Model Pulse, the download history of every model on the Hub.