Do Large Language Model Benchmarks Test Reliability?

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Vendrow, Joshua, Vendrow, Edward, Beery, Sara, Madry, Aleksander
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866912221403021312
author Vendrow, Joshua
Vendrow, Edward
Beery, Sara
Madry, Aleksander
author_facet Vendrow, Joshua
Vendrow, Edward
Beery, Sara
Madry, Aleksander
contents When deploying large language models (LLMs), it is important to ensure that these models are not only capable, but also reliable. Many benchmarks have been created to track LLMs' growing capabilities, however there has been no similar focus on measuring their reliability. To understand the potential ramifications of this gap, we investigate how well current benchmarks quantify model reliability. We find that pervasive label errors can compromise these evaluations, obscuring lingering model failures and hiding unreliable behavior. Motivated by this gap in the evaluation of reliability, we then propose the concept of so-called platinum benchmarks, i.e., benchmarks carefully curated to minimize label errors and ambiguity. As a first attempt at constructing such benchmarks, we revise examples from fifteen existing popular benchmarks. We evaluate a wide range of models on these platinum benchmarks and find that, indeed, frontier LLMs still exhibit failures on simple tasks such as elementary-level math word problems. Analyzing these failures further reveals previously unidentified patterns of problems on which frontier models consistently struggle. We provide code at https://github.com/MadryLab/platinum-benchmarks
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_03461
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do Large Language Model Benchmarks Test Reliability?
Vendrow, Joshua
Vendrow, Edward
Beery, Sara
Madry, Aleksander
Machine Learning
Computation and Language
When deploying large language models (LLMs), it is important to ensure that these models are not only capable, but also reliable. Many benchmarks have been created to track LLMs' growing capabilities, however there has been no similar focus on measuring their reliability. To understand the potential ramifications of this gap, we investigate how well current benchmarks quantify model reliability. We find that pervasive label errors can compromise these evaluations, obscuring lingering model failures and hiding unreliable behavior. Motivated by this gap in the evaluation of reliability, we then propose the concept of so-called platinum benchmarks, i.e., benchmarks carefully curated to minimize label errors and ambiguity. As a first attempt at constructing such benchmarks, we revise examples from fifteen existing popular benchmarks. We evaluate a wide range of models on these platinum benchmarks and find that, indeed, frontier LLMs still exhibit failures on simple tasks such as elementary-level math word problems. Analyzing these failures further reveals previously unidentified patterns of problems on which frontier models consistently struggle. We provide code at https://github.com/MadryLab/platinum-benchmarks
title Do Large Language Model Benchmarks Test Reliability?
topic Machine Learning
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03461