Benchmarking AI for low-resource contexts: Thinking beyond leaderboards

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Pant, Aakash, Shah, Kavya, Agnihotri, Apoorv, Nikam, Sneha, Balraj, Prasaanth, Jain, Nakul
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866910281028861952
author Pant, Aakash
Shah, Kavya
Agnihotri, Apoorv
Nikam, Sneha
Balraj, Prasaanth
Jain, Nakul
author_facet Pant, Aakash
Shah, Kavya
Agnihotri, Apoorv
Nikam, Sneha
Balraj, Prasaanth
Jain, Nakul
contents Existing AI evaluation practices often fail to capture how systems actually perform in low-resource environments, where operational constraints shape usability as much as model quality. Through a structured analysis of existing benchmark families across speech, chat/RAG, and vision systems, we identify critical gaps between laboratory evaluation practices and real-world deployment conditions in low-resource environments. We argue that the meaningful unit of assessment is the deployed system rather than an isolated model and that effective evaluation frameworks must integrate task performance with deployment conditions such as noisy inputs, code-switching, intermittent connectivity, low-end hardware, and domain shift. At the same time, benchmarks should recognize that different application classes require distinct evaluation profiles rather than a single aggregate score that obscures operational differences. To support practical decision-making, we propose a shared reporting framework that preserves comparability across systems and application types while remaining sensitive to deployment context. Finally, we emphasize the need for concise and actionable reporting artifacts for policymakers, donors, and implementers, including standardized one-page benchmark cards, deployment profiles, and explicit documentation of failure handling procedures and human oversight mechanisms.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_28508
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Benchmarking AI for low-resource contexts: Thinking beyond leaderboards
Pant, Aakash
Shah, Kavya
Agnihotri, Apoorv
Nikam, Sneha
Balraj, Prasaanth
Jain, Nakul
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.0; I.2.1
Existing AI evaluation practices often fail to capture how systems actually perform in low-resource environments, where operational constraints shape usability as much as model quality. Through a structured analysis of existing benchmark families across speech, chat/RAG, and vision systems, we identify critical gaps between laboratory evaluation practices and real-world deployment conditions in low-resource environments. We argue that the meaningful unit of assessment is the deployed system rather than an isolated model and that effective evaluation frameworks must integrate task performance with deployment conditions such as noisy inputs, code-switching, intermittent connectivity, low-end hardware, and domain shift. At the same time, benchmarks should recognize that different application classes require distinct evaluation profiles rather than a single aggregate score that obscures operational differences. To support practical decision-making, we propose a shared reporting framework that preserves comparability across systems and application types while remaining sensitive to deployment context. Finally, we emphasize the need for concise and actionable reporting artifacts for policymakers, donors, and implementers, including standardized one-page benchmark cards, deployment profiles, and explicit documentation of failure handling procedures and human oversight mechanisms.
title Benchmarking AI for low-resource contexts: Thinking beyond leaderboards
topic Artificial Intelligence
I.2.0; I.2.1
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.28508