In plain words: A review of about 100 studies from the last decade examined how AI benchmarks are built and used, looking for flaws in their design and real-world relevance. It found the tests are over-trusted: results get gamed, contaminated, and shaped by competition rather than safety.
Abstract · Can We Trust AI Benchmarks? An Interdisciplinary Review of Current Issues in AI Evaluation
Quantitative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Benchmarks have emerged as fundamental tools for evaluating the performance, capability, and safety of AI models and systems. Currently, they shape the direction of AI development and are playing an increasingly prominent role in regulatory frameworks. As their influence grows, however, so too does concerns about how and with what effects they evaluate highly sensitive topics such as capabilities, including high-impact capabilities, safety and systemic risks. This paper presents an interdisciplinary meta-review of about 100 studies that discuss shortcomings in quantitative benchmarking practices, published in the last 10 years. It brings together many fine-grained issues in the design and application of benchmarks (such as biases in dataset creation, inadequate documentation, data contamination, and failures to distinguish signal from noise) with broader sociotechnical issues (such as an over-focus on evaluating text-based AI models according to one-time testing logic that fails to account for how AI models are increasingly multimodal and interact with humans and other technical systems). Our review also highlights a series of systemic flaws in current benchmarking practices, such as misaligned incentives, construct validity issues, unknown unknowns, and problems with the gaming of benchmark results. Furthermore, it underscores how benchmark practices are fundamentally shaped by cultural, commercial and competitive dynamics that often prioritise state-of-the-art performance at the expense of broader societal concerns. By providing an overview of risks associated with existing benchmarking procedures, we problematise disproportionate trust placed in benchmarks and contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the accountability and relevance of quantitative AI benchmarks within the complexities of real-world scenarios.
Maria Eriksson, Erasmo Purificato, Arman Noroozian, Joao Vinagre, Guillaume Chaslot, Emilia Gomez, David Fernandez-Llorca
arXiv:2502.06559 · cs.AI · submitted Feb 10, 2025 · updated May 25, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · Under review as conference paper
> When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
It is highly likely effort is being put specifically into meeting benchmarks which in turn means the models are good at meeting benchmarks but not necessarily at what the benchmarks are trying to measure.
Of course ideally they are well designed enough that trying to meet them causes the model to be good at/have the properties they are benchmarking but there’s no guarantee that’ll always be the case.