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Learned Helplessness

๐ŸŸก MEDIUM alignment proven AVE-2025-0008

ยท aka: Agent Passivity, Failure Habituation

Summary

After repeated failures, agents reduce their effort and initiative. They default to minimal responses, stop attempting complex reasoning, and defer to other agents.

Blast Radius

Agent becomes functionally inert. Throughput drops to near zero.

Prerequisites

Agent exposed to repeated failure scenarios.

Environment

  • Frameworks: LangGraph
  • Models tested: [Available in NAIL SDK]
  • Multi-agent: No
  • Tools required: No
  • Memory required: No