mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Benchmarks Saturate When The Model Gets Smarter Than The Judge

arXiv 2601.19532 ↗First posted 27 Jan 2026cs.AI cs.CL cs.LGcited by 11

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Abstract (arXiv)

Benchmarks are important tools to track progress in the development of Large Language Models (LLMs), yet inaccuracies in datasets and evaluation methods consistently undermine their effectiveness. Here, we present Omni-MATH-2, a manually revised version of the Omni-MATH dataset comprising a clean, exact-answer subset (n=4181) and a tagged, non-standard subset (n=247). Each problem was audited to ensure LaTeX compilability, solvability and verifiability, which involved adding missing figures or information, labeling problems requiring a proof, estimation or image, and removing clutter. This process significantly reduces dataset-induced noise, thereby providing a more precise assessment of model performance. The annotated dataset also allows us to evaluate judge-induced noise by comparing GPT-5 mini with the original Omni-Judge, revealing substantial discrepancies between judges on both the clean and tagged problem subsets. Expert annotations reveal that Omni-Judge is wrong in 96.4% of the judge disagreements, indicating its inability to differentiate between models' abilities, even well before saturation of the benchmark occurs. As problems become more challenging, we find that increasingly competent judges become essential in order to prevent judge errors from masking genuine differences between models. Finally, neither judge identifies the present failure modes for the subset of tagged problems, demonstrating that dataset quality and judge reliability are both critical to develop accurate benchmarks of model performance.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 25 of its 30 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Jan 2026.

Builds on

25 of 30 references.

References · 25

  1. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  2. 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,626
  3. 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
  4. 2023A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Modelscited by 1,242
  5. 2023Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formattingcited by 817
  6. 2024From Generation to Judgment: Opportunities and Challenges of LLM-as-a-judgecited by 494
  7. 2025Humanity's Last Examcited by 491
  8. 2024LLMs-as-Judges: A Comprehensive Survey on LLM-based Evaluation Methodscited by 465
  9. 2024Replacing Judges with Juries: Evaluating LLM Generations with a Panel of Diverse Modelscited by 326
  10. 2024Omni-MATH: A Universal Olympiad Level Mathematic Benchmark For Large Language Modelscited by 284
  11. 2024FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AIcited by 243
  12. 2024Are We Done with MMLU?cited by 194
13 more
  1. 2024Lessons from the Trenches on Reproducible Evaluation of Language Modelscited by 179
  2. 2024Adding Error Bars to Evals: A Statistical Approach to Language Model Evaluationscited by 148
  3. 2024BetterBench: Assessing AI Benchmarks, Uncovering Issues, and Establishing Best Practicescited by 114
  4. 2024Open-LLM-Leaderboard: From Multi-choice to Open-style Questions for LLMs Evaluation, Benchmark, and Arenacited by 76
  5. 2025The Alternative Annotator Test for LLM-as-a-Judge: How to Statistically Justify Replacing Human Annotators with LLMscited by 74
  6. 2024Can You Trust LLM Judgments? Reliability of LLM-as-a-Judgecited by 56
  7. 2025Do Large Language Model Benchmarks Test Reliability?cited by 54
  8. 2025Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotationcited by 50
  9. 2024Auto-Arena: Automating LLM Evaluations with Agent Peer Battles and Committee Discussionscited by 42
  10. 2025Position: Don't Use the CLT in LLM Evals With Fewer Than a Few Hundred Datapointscited by 23
  11. 2025On Robustness and Reliability of Benchmark-Based Evaluation of LLMscited by 23
  12. 2024xFinder: Large Language Models as Automated Evaluators for Reliable Evaluationcited by 19
  13. 2024JudgeBlender: Ensembling Judgments for Automatic Relevance Assessmentcited by 6

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.

11 papers.