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TLDR: We found that models can coordinate without communication by reasoning that their reasoning is similar across all instances, a behavior known as superrationality. Superrationality is observed in recent powerful models and outperforms classic rationality in strategic games. Current superrational models cooperate more often with AI than with humans, even when both are said to be rational. Figure 1. GPT-5 exhibits superrationality with itself but classic rationality with humans. GPT-5 is more selective than GPT-4o when displaying superrationality, preferring AI over humans. > My feeling is that the concept of superrationality is one whose truth will come to dominate among intelligent beings in the universe simply because its adherents will survive certain kinds of situations where its opponents will perish. Let’s wait a few spins of the galaxy and see. After all, healthy logic is whatever remains after evolution’s merciless pruning. > > — Douglas Hofstadter Introduction Readers familiar with superrationality can skip to the next section. In the 1980s, Douglas Hofstadter sent a telegram to twenty friends, inviting them to play a one-shot, multi-player prisoner's dilemma, with real monetary payoffs. In Hofstadter's prisoner's dilemma, each player can choose to either cooperate or defect. If both players cooperate, both get $3. If both defect, both get $1. If one cooperates and one defects, the cooperator gets $0 while the defector gets $5. The dominant strategy is to defect: by defecting instead of cooperating, a player earns $1 instead of $0 if the other player defects, and earns $5 instead of $3 if the other player cooperates. In both cases, a player is better off defecting, and the Nash equilibria is that all rational players would defect. In a 20-player prisoner's dilemma, the player's choice is replayed to each of the other 19 players. Under this setup, if all players are classically rational and play defect, each of them will receive $19. > David Polica