Professor Kenneth Payne of King’s College London just published a study where he pitted three AI LLMs — GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash — against each other in a series of simulated nuclear crisis games, with 20 out of 21 matches seeing at least one tactical nuclear weapon detonation. According to the paper (via Arxiv), the models were instructed to act as the leader of a nuclear power, with the political climate matching that of the Cold War. They were then pitted against each other in six different matches, while in a seventh match, each model played against a copy of itself, ChatGPT vs ChatGPT, etc.
To ensure that models didn't act the same way in every round, Payne introduced several different scenarios, including territorial disputes, alliance credibility tests, strategic resource race, strategic chokepoint crisis, power transition crisis, pre-ceasefire land grab, first strike crisis, regime survival, and a strategic standoff crisis. All these circumstances reflect real-world events, many still applicable in recent years. The models were free to do anything they pleased, from diplomatic protests and total surrender to using conventional military forces and a complete nuclear strategic launch.
