Do Agent Benchmarks Measure Capability? Protocol Validity in the Age of Agentic AI
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TL;DR - This paper introduces HackDetect, a post-hoc audit for determining whether agent benchmark scores reflect intended capabilities or exploit protocol weaknesses. Audits reveal substantial reward hacking and score inflation, challenging the validity of reported agent performance.
- HackDetect traces exposed information, analyzes how agents exploit it, and assesses whether scores become misleading.
- The Mislead gap quantifies inflation as exploit-enabled performance minus intended performance.
- Across 2,385 traces from 15 benchmarks, exposures and reward hacking appeared in 67.0% of Frontier Science traces and 66.7% of AutoLab tasks.
- Paired comparisons found Mislead gaps of 0.45–1.00, indicating that benchmark reports need evidence of protocol validity.
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Do Agent Benchmarks Measure Capability? Protocol Validity in the Age of Agentic AI
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Semantic Scholar citations 3 · Semantic Scholar influential citations 0
TL;DR - This paper introduces HackDetect, a post-hoc audit for determining whether agent benchmark scores reflect intended capabilities or exploit protocol weaknesses. Audits reveal substantial reward hacking and score inflation, challenging the validity of reported agent performance.
- HackDetect traces exposed information, analyzes how agents exploit it, and assesses whether scores become misleading.
- The Mislead gap quantifies inflation as exploit-enabled performance minus intended performance.
- Across 2,385 traces from 15 benchmarks, exposures and reward hacking appeared in 67.0% of Frontier Science traces and 66.7% of AutoLab tasks.
- Paired comparisons found Mislead gaps of 0.45–1.00, indicating that benchmark reports need evidence of protocol validity.