aiqbench analysis
WorkWorlds addresses a critical flaw in current AI agent benchmarks by decoupling task specifications from pre-assembled contexts, thereby simulating the genuine information-localization challenges of real-world workplaces. The study demonstrates that when agents must navigate full organizational states rather than curated environments, their ability to access necessary evidence drops significantly, revealing a gap between idealized test scores and actual workplace performance. This infrastructure provides a more rigorous framework for evaluating AI agents in complex, dynamic professional settings.
WorkWorlds: An Infrastructure for Evaluating AI Agents on Workplace Tasks
arXiv:2609.23806v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Many knowledge-work benchmarks are constructed around individual tasks, with the context needed for each task selected together with or after the task has been specified. This design measures performance on workplace-like tasks in an environment assembled for the task. When task specification guides which context is selected, the evaluation can encode task information into the environment and pre-complete part of the information-localization work that workplace performance normally requires. We introduce WorkWorlds, an evaluation infrastructure that separates organizational state from task specification. A world first fixes a revision, date, and employee seat and materializes the organizational state that employee can access; tasks are introduced only afterward. We implement WorkWorlds in a primary synthetic pharmaceutical company with 8 measured tasks across 6 employee seats, and construct additional organizational worlds. Across 192 matched evaluations, moving from task-curated context to the full role-visible workplace reduced evidence access from 90.4% to 74.5% and criterion pass from 79.4% to 68.2%, while pass conditional on evidence access remained nearly unchanged; most of the measured difference occurred before the agent reached sufficient evidence.
Abstract:Many knowledge-work benchmarks are constructed around individual tasks, with the context needed for each task selected together with or after the task has been specified. This design measures performance on workplace-like tasks in an environment assembled for the task. When task specification guides which context is selected, the evaluation can encode task information into the environment and pre-complete part of the information-localization work that workplace performance normally requires. We introduce WorkWorlds, an evaluation infrastructure that separates organizational state from task specification. A world first fixes a revision, date, and employee seat and materializes the organizational state that employee can access; tasks are introduced only afterward. We implement WorkWorlds in a primary synthetic pharmaceutical company with 8 measured tasks across 6 employee seats, and construct additional organizational worlds. Across 192 matched evaluations, moving from task-curated context to the full role-visible workplace reduced evidence access from 90.4% to 74.5% and criterion pass from 79.4% to 68.2%, while pass conditional on evidence access remained nearly unchanged; most of the measured difference occurred before the agent reached sufficient evidence.
Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2609.23806 [cs.AI]
(or arXiv:2609.23806v1 [cs.AI] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.23806 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 269 words
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