aiqbench analysis
This article is about an AI agent benchmark: it evaluates frontier models on long-horizon terminal tasks, so AI is the primary subject. The best fit is AI Research, since it introduces a new evaluation methodology and reports comparative results across models. The key takeaway for readers is the gap between binary pass/fail scoring (0.221) and dense progress scoring (0.653), which suggests outcome-only benchmarks may understate what agents accomplish. Readers should still treat the leaderboard figures with caution until independent replication confirms them.
Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench 2.0: Automating Diverse Task Construction and Measuring Sustained Agent Progress
arXiv:2610.14146v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-horizon terminal benchmarks measure whether an agent can sustain progress through extended workflows with process rewards, not only whether its final state passes a binary check. We present Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench 2.0 (LHTB 2.0), an extension of Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench that preserves its 46 original tasks while correcting task and evaluation-infrastructure defects and extending 31 tasks. LHTB 2.0 contains 77 tasks across 13 domains and eight task types. The extended tasks are produced through a systematic reconstruction-task pipeline. We start from a working scientific or engineering artifact, then use a parameterized reference implementation to generate multiple scenarios, reveal six as behavioral evidence, hold out three for evaluation, and use dense progress ladders to reward partial progress while preventing memorization of public outputs. We also extend the evaluation horizon from 90 minutes to three hours and record verifier checkpoints every 30 minutes, enabling direct measurement of sustained progress within a run. Across 1,145 scored model-task runs from 15 frontier models, GPT-6-astra leads with dense mean reward 0.69 and 37 tasks at R at least 0.95, followed by GPT-5.6-sol with dense mean reward 0.67 and 32 tasks at the same threshold. On the 30 reconstruction tasks, binary verifier scores average 0.221, whereas dense ladder scores average 0.653, showing that outcome-only evaluation discards substantial intermediate progress. LHTB 2.0 provides a broader, hardened, and process-aware testbed for studying reliable agent execution over hours.
Title:Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench 2.0: Automating Diverse Task Construction and Measuring Sustained Agent Progress
Abstract:Long-horizon terminal benchmarks measure whether an agent can sustain progress through extended workflows with process rewards, not only whether its final state passes a binary check. We present Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench 2.0 (LHTB 2.0), an extension of Long-Horizon-Terminal-Bench that preserves its 46 original tasks while correcting task and evaluation-infrastructure defects and extending 31 tasks. LHTB 2.0 contains 77 tasks across 13 domains and eight task types. The extended tasks are produced through a systematic reconstruction-task pipeline. We start from a working scientific or engineering artifact, then use a parameterized reference implementation to generate multiple scenarios, reveal six as behavioral evidence, hold out three for evaluation, and use dense progress ladders to reward partial progress while preventing memorization of public outputs. We also extend the evaluation horizon from 90 minutes to three hours and record verifier checkpoints every 30 minutes, enabling direct measurement of sustained progress within a run. Across 1,145 scored model-task runs from 15 frontier models, GPT-6-astra leads with dense mean reward 0.69 and 37 tasks at R at least 0.95, followed by GPT-5.6-sol with dense mean reward 0.67 and 32 tasks at the same threshold. On the 30 reconstruction tasks, binary verifier scores average 0.221, whereas dense ladder scores average 0.653, showing that outcome-only evaluation discards substantial intermediate progress. LHTB 2.0 provides a broader, hardened, and process-aware testbed for studying reliable agent execution over hours.
21 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables. Includes appendix
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2610.14146 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2610.14146v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.14146 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 338 words
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