Benchmarks Saturate When The Model Gets Smarter Than The Judge
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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
- 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
- 2023Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arenacited by 8,626
- 2021Measuring Mathematical Problem Solving With the MATH Datasetcited by 5,371
- 2023A Survey on Evaluation of Large Language Modelscited by 1,242
- 2023Quantifying Language Models' Sensitivity to Spurious Features in Prompt Design or: How I learned to start worrying about prompt formattingcited by 817
- 2024From Generation to Judgment: Opportunities and Challenges of LLM-as-a-judgecited by 494
- 2025Humanity's Last Examcited by 491
- 2024LLMs-as-Judges: A Comprehensive Survey on LLM-based Evaluation Methodscited by 465
- 2024Replacing Judges with Juries: Evaluating LLM Generations with a Panel of Diverse Modelscited by 326
- 2024Omni-MATH: A Universal Olympiad Level Mathematic Benchmark For Large Language Modelscited by 284
- 2024FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AIcited by 243
- 2024Are We Done with MMLU?cited by 194
13 more
- 2024Lessons from the Trenches on Reproducible Evaluation of Language Modelscited by 179
- 2024Adding Error Bars to Evals: A Statistical Approach to Language Model Evaluationscited by 148
- 2024BetterBench: Assessing AI Benchmarks, Uncovering Issues, and Establishing Best Practicescited by 114
- 2024Open-LLM-Leaderboard: From Multi-choice to Open-style Questions for LLMs Evaluation, Benchmark, and Arenacited by 76
- 2025The Alternative Annotator Test for LLM-as-a-Judge: How to Statistically Justify Replacing Human Annotators with LLMscited by 74
- 2024Can You Trust LLM Judgments? Reliability of LLM-as-a-Judgecited by 56
- 2025Do Large Language Model Benchmarks Test Reliability?cited by 54
- 2025Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotationcited by 50
- 2024Auto-Arena: Automating LLM Evaluations with Agent Peer Battles and Committee Discussionscited by 42
- 2025Position: Don't Use the CLT in LLM Evals With Fewer Than a Few Hundred Datapointscited by 23
- 2025On Robustness and Reliability of Benchmark-Based Evaluation of LLMscited by 23
- 2024xFinder: Large Language Models as Automated Evaluators for Reliable Evaluationcited by 19
- 2024JudgeBlender: Ensembling Judgments for Automatic Relevance Assessmentcited by 6
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 11.
11 papers.
- 2026BenchGuard: Who Guards the Benchmarks? Automated Auditing of LLM Agent Benchmarkscited by 15
- 2026Precise but Uncoupled: Reviewer Precision Does Not Guarantee Critique Uptake in Multi-Agent Math Reasoningcited by 2
- 2026How Much Does a Reasoning Summary Reveal? An Observability Ladder for Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Shorter Reasoning, Earlier Answers? An Evaluation of Reasoning Interfacescited by 1
- 2026Wrong but Useful: Trajectory Value Beyond Answer Correctness in Multi-Agent Messagescited by 1
- 2026Early Evidence of Vibe-Proving with Consumer LLMs: A Case Study on Spectral Region Characterization with ChatGPT-5.2 (Thinking)cited by 0
- 2026Thinking Like a Scientist? A Structural Study of LLM-Generated Research Methodscited by 0
- 2026LLMs Can Predict Failure Risk, But Struggle to Predict Which Collaboration Protocol Pays Off: Cost-Aware Protocol Routing Across Reasoning Taskscited by 0
- 2026Beyond Repeated Sampling: Learning Search Policies for LLM Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Universal Textual Teaching for LLMscited by 0
- 2026Big-Big-SycoBench: A Benchmark to Detect Sycophancy Through Model Responses to Valid vs. Invalid Argumentscited by 0
- 2026Big-Big-SycoBench: A Benchmark to Detect Sycophancy Through Model Responses to Valid vs. Invalid Arguments11 Oct 2026
- 2026Universal Textual Teaching for LLMs8 Oct 2026
- 2026Beyond Repeated Sampling: Learning Search Policies for LLM Reasoning22 Sep 2026
- 2026LLMs Can Predict Failure Risk, But Struggle to Predict Which Collaboration Protocol Pays Off: Cost-Aware Protocol Routing Across Reasoning Tasks14 Aug 2026
- 2026Wrong but Useful: Trajectory Value Beyond Answer Correctness in Multi-Agent Messages14 Aug 2026
- 2026Shorter Reasoning, Earlier Answers? An Evaluation of Reasoning Interfaces4 Aug 2026
- 2026How Much Does a Reasoning Summary Reveal? An Observability Ladder for Large Language Models3 Aug 2026
- 2026Precise but Uncoupled: Reviewer Precision Does Not Guarantee Critique Uptake in Multi-Agent Math Reasoning16 Jul 2026
- 2026Thinking Like a Scientist? A Structural Study of LLM-Generated Research Methods15 Jun 2026
- 2026BenchGuard: Who Guards the Benchmarks? Automated Auditing of LLM Agent Benchmarks27 Apr 2026
- 2026Early Evidence of Vibe-Proving with Consumer LLMs: A Case Study on Spectral Region Characterization with ChatGPT-5.2 (Thinking)21 Feb 2026