arXiv:2610.33014v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A negotiation assistant can reach a good deal without accurately predicting the other person's response. We ask whether evaluations of social world models test that prediction directly. We audit 113 works published from 1999 to 2026. 9 primary evaluations measure a real person's response to an action selected by the system or experimenter. Only 2 also compare an explicit response forecast with that response. Their predictors use information available when the action is chosen, and the evaluated responses were excluded from fitting; both randomize the intervention. A separate full-text check of 25 language-model works finds no experiment meeting these conditions. The other evaluations test current-state inference, task success, or prediction from recorded actions. We propose a 1-step negotiation experiment that separates these questions. The findings describe the audited sample, not the prevalence of this evaluation gap across the field.
The Social World Model Evaluation Gap
An audit of 113 works published from 1999 to 2026 found that only 9 primary evaluations measure a real person's response to an action selected by a system or experimenter, and only 2 of those also compare an explicit response forecast with that response, according to the arXiv paper 2610.33014v1. A separate full-text check of 25 language-model works found no experiment meeting those conditions, with the remaining evaluations testing current-state inference, task success, or prediction from recorded actions. The authors propose a 1-step negotiation experiment to separate these questions and note the findings describe the audited sample, not the prevalence of the gap across the field.
Run your AI side-project on zahid.host
EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.