LLMs Struggle with Pragmatic Cooperativity Under Epistemic Asymmetry

Jul 14, 2026

A new preprint investigates the pragmatic reasoning abilities of large language models (LLMs) in multi-party collaborative tasks where participants have only partial information. The study finds that while LLMs can display some pragmatic skills, they often struggle to communicate effectively under epistemic asymmetry and frequently fail to recognize violations of Grice's cooperative principles.

Why it matters: This work reveals key limitations in LLMs' ability to engage in effective, cooperative communication in real-world scenarios where information is not fully shared.

Full story at: arXiv Computation and Language ↗