The Evolving Landscape of Language Model Evaluation

The evaluation of language models has become increasingly complex, with a major emphasis on the level of detail required in reporting results. Companies now face shifting needs for evaluations, which necessitates more transparency in the metrics they report. Amidst the rise of new models and evaluation procedures, there is growing concern over the reliability and comparability of evaluations due to the potential manipulation of results to favor marketing narratives. The challenges stem from the closed nature of many evaluations and the contamination that can occur when firms use custom prompts or fudged datasets, leading to inconsistencies in how model performance is assessed.