The Ouroboros of Benchmarking: Reasoning Evaluation in an Era of Saturation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Deveci, İbrahim Ethem, Ataman, Duygu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Deveci, İbrahim Ethem
Ataman, Duygu
author_facet Deveci, İbrahim Ethem
Ataman, Duygu
contents The rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) has been accompanied by an equally rapid increase of benchmarks used to assess them. However, due to both improved model competence resulting from scaling and novel training advances as well as likely many of these datasets being included in pre or post training data, results become saturated, driving a continuous need for new and more challenging replacements. In this paper, we discuss whether surpassing a benchmark truly demonstrates reasoning ability or are we simply tracking numbers divorced from the capabilities we claim to measure? We present an investigation focused on three model families, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and how their reasoning capabilities across different benchmarks evolve over the years. We also analyze performance trends over the years across different reasoning tasks and discuss the current situation of benchmarking and remaining challenges. By offering a comprehensive overview of benchmarks and reasoning tasks, our work aims to serve as a first reference to ground future research in reasoning evaluation and model development.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_01365
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Ouroboros of Benchmarking: Reasoning Evaluation in an Era of Saturation
Deveci, İbrahim Ethem
Ataman, Duygu
Computation and Language
The rapid rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) has been accompanied by an equally rapid increase of benchmarks used to assess them. However, due to both improved model competence resulting from scaling and novel training advances as well as likely many of these datasets being included in pre or post training data, results become saturated, driving a continuous need for new and more challenging replacements. In this paper, we discuss whether surpassing a benchmark truly demonstrates reasoning ability or are we simply tracking numbers divorced from the capabilities we claim to measure? We present an investigation focused on three model families, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and how their reasoning capabilities across different benchmarks evolve over the years. We also analyze performance trends over the years across different reasoning tasks and discuss the current situation of benchmarking and remaining challenges. By offering a comprehensive overview of benchmarks and reasoning tasks, our work aims to serve as a first reference to ground future research in reasoning evaluation and model development.
title The Ouroboros of Benchmarking: Reasoning Evaluation in an Era of Saturation
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01365