Who Chooses How Preferences Are Aggregated? Auditing Aggregation-Rule Authority in LLM-Based Group Recommendation

Abstract

AI systems increasingly make joint recommendations for users with conflicting preferences. However, when reasonable aggregation rules support different actions, a further question arises: who may choose how those preferences are combined? We study this interaction-level problem as aggregation-rule authority. Using synthetic preference profiles and profiles constructed from empirical ratings, we conduct a controlled behavioral audit of three LLMs under three authority conditions: unspecified, explicitly retained by users, and delegated to the model. In cases where two witness rules supported different actions, models almost never committed when users retained authority, but committed in every delegated case. All three models executed both witness rules perfectly when directly instructed. Yet when authority was unspecified or delegated, their aggregation-consistent outcome distributions differed across models and preference settings. Together, these results separate rule-execution capability from aggregation-rule authority: delegation assigns the model discretion to resolve the aggregation choice, but does not determine which collective outcome follows.