arXiv Machine Learning

One Capability or Many? Structural and Predictive Tests of Benchmark Validity Disagree About Economic Benchmarks for Frontier AI

The paper examines whether economic benchmarks used in frontier AI leaderboards measure a distinct capability or merely reflect general test-taking ability. Using a structural factor analysis and a predictive leave-one-benchmark-out test on a snapshot of 421 model configurations, the authors find that economic benchmarks do not form a separate factor but are better predicted by a multi‑factor representation than by a single general index, especially for linear learners. They argue that construct validity should be evaluated with both structural and predictive tests and provide a two‑test protocol along with data and code.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 24

You Don't Need to Run Every Eval

arXiv:2606. 24020v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A modern model release reports scores on 40+ benchmarks and the same evaluations were run many more times before it: to track training progress, compare design choices, and select the checkpoint for the release.

By Yuchen Zeng, Dimitris Papailiopoulos
arXiv AI
Sep 21

Balance of Benchmarks: Semantic Density Reweighting for Task-Conditioned Model Comparison

The paper introduces Balance of Benchmarks (BoB), a framework that improves task-conditioned model comparison by weighting benchmark evidence based on semantic density, equating scores across varying difficulty levels, and pooling task-relevant residuals. BoB retains all eligible benchmark data while adjusting its influence, outperforming uniform averaging on the WildScores dataset with higher Spearman correlation, lower MAE, and better shortlist hit rates. The method also reduces ranking instability when benchmarks are repeated or paraphrased, and lowers retrospective regret in model selection.

By Jhen-Ke Lin, Hong-Yun Lin
arXiv AI
Jul 3

PACE: A Proxy for Agentic Capability Evaluation

arXiv:2607. 02032v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Evaluating LLM agents on benchmarks like SWE-Bench and GAIA can be expensive, time-consuming, and requires complex infrastructure.

By Yueqi Song, Lintang Sutawika, Jiarui Liu, Lindia Tjuatja, Jiayi Geng, Yunze Xiao, Daniel Lee, Aditya Bharat Soni, Vincent Lo, Xiang Yue, Graham Neubig
arXiv AI
Jul 14

Coresets Before Score Sets: Evaluation-Unsupervised Prompt Subset Selection for LLM Benchmarks

arXiv:2607. 09739v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study LLM benchmark coreset selection: selecting a small subset of prompts over multiple benchmarks whose induced model scores and rankings approximate those obtained from the full benchmark suite.

By Jihan Yao, Gantavya Bhatt, Arnav Das, Peter Jin, Ke Bao, Qiaolin Yu, Khushi Bhardwaj, Chang Su, Jialei Wang, Yikai Zhu, Sugam Devare, Damon Mosk-Aoyama, Zhen Dong, Venkat Krishna Srinivasan, Yineng Zhang, Oleksii Kuchaiev, Jiantao Jiao, Banghua Zhu, Jeff Bilmes
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

Evaluation Choices Decide the Forecasting Leaderboard: Evidence from a Production Marketplace Panel

The paper demonstrates that the outcome of a forecasting leaderboard is largely determined by the evaluator’s design choices rather than the models themselves. By fixing the data, horizon, and period, the authors varied three key evaluation decisions—unit of analysis, error pooling, and scoring metric—and showed that each can reverse or eliminate the apparent superiority of any forecasting method. The study also evaluates the practical impact of these choices on a deployed system, revealing that the selection rule captures a significant portion of the potential performance gain, and confirms the findings on an external public dataset.

By Md Rezwanul Islam, Wael Mohammed