DiplomacyAgent: Do LLMs Balance Interests and Ethical Principles in International Events?

The widespread deployment of large language models (LLMs) across various domains has made their safety a critical priority. Inspired by think-tank decision-making philosophy, we propose DiplomacyAgent, an LLM-based multiagent system for diplomatic position analysis. With DiplomacyAgent, we are able to systematically assess how LLMs balance "interests" against "ethical principles" when addressing various international events, hence understanding the safety implications of LLMs in diplomacy. Specifically, this will help to assess the consistency of LLM stance with widely recognized ethical standards, as well as the potential risks or ideological biases that may arise. Through integrated quantitative metrics, our research uncovers unexpected decision-making patterns in LLM responses to sensitive issues including human rights protection, environmental sustainability, regional conflicts, etc. It discloses that LLMs could exhibit a strong bias towards interests, leading to unsafe decisions that violate ethical and moral principles. Our experiment results suggest that deploying LLMs in high-stakes domains, particularly in the formulation of diplomatic policies, necessitates a comprehensive assessment of potential ethical and social implications, as well as the implementation of stringent safety protocols.