# A Stevens's Power Law Check-up of GPT-5.5's Implicit Reading of Visual Encoding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.08365 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.08365/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 22 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [ARC-AGI-2: A New Challenge for Frontier AI Reasoning Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11831/) (2025)
- [On the Measure of Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.01547/) (2019)
- [MIRAGE: The Illusion of Visual Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21687/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We adapt Stevens's power law to measure the implicit ability of AI models to read visualizations, which can reveal the built-in perceptual mechanisms of algorithmic models. In our pilot study, AIs see no legend. In the color conditions, no colormap name is provided either. GPT-5.5 first views a reference visual representation and estimates its magnitude, then estimates the magnitude of each subsequent image of the same representation relative to that reference. Our evaluation of twelve visual variables makes how algorithmic models read visual encodings measurable, comparable with human perception, and more transparent to humans.