Ensuring safe and effective use of AI requires understanding and anticipating its performance on novel tasks, from advanced scientific challenges to transformed workplace activities. So far, benchmarking has guided progress in AI, but it has offered limited explanatory and predictive power for general-purpose AI systems, given the low transferability across diverse tasks. In this paper, we introduce general scales for AI evaluation that can explain what common AI benchmarks really measure, extract ability profiles of AI systems, and predict their performance for new task instances, in- and out-of-distribution. Our fully-automated methodology builds on 18 newly-crafted rubrics that place instance demands on general scales that do not saturate. Illustrated for 15 large language models and 63 tasks, high explanatory power is unleashed from inspecting the demand and ability profiles, bringing insights on the sensitivity and specificity exhibited by different benchmarks, and how knowledge, metacognition and reasoning are affected by model size, chain-of-thought and distillation. Surprisingly, high predictive power at the instance level becomes possible using these demand levels, providing superior estimates over black-box baseline predictors based on embeddings or finetuning, especially in out-of-distribution settings (new tasks and new benchmarks). The scales, rubrics, battery, techniques and results presented here represent a major step for AI evaluation, underpinning the reliable deployment of AI in the years ahead. (Collaborative platform: https://kinds-of-intelligence-cfi.github.io/ADELE.)

Artificial intelligence has, so far, largely automated routine tasks, but what does it mean for the future of work if Large Language Models (LLMs) show creativity comparable to humans? To measure the creativity of LLMs holistically, the current study uses 13 creative tasks spanning three domains. We benchmark the LLMs against individual humans, and also take a novel approach by comparing them to the collective creativity of groups of humans. We find that the best LLMs (Claude and GPT-4) rank in the 52nd percentile against humans, and overall LLMs excel in divergent thinking and problem solving but lag in creative writing. When questioned 10 times, an LLM's collective creativity is equivalent to 8-10 humans. When more responses are requested, two additional responses of LLMs equal one extra human. Ultimately, LLMs, when optimally applied, may compete with a small group of humans in the future of work.

Comprehensive and accurate evaluation of general-purpose AI systems such as large language models allows for effective mitigation of their risks and deepened understanding of their capabilities. Current evaluation methodology, mostly based on benchmarks of specific tasks, falls short of adequately assessing these versatile AI systems, as present techniques lack a scientific foundation for predicting their performance on unforeseen tasks and explaining their varying performance on specific task items or user inputs. Moreover, existing benchmarks of specific tasks raise growing concerns about their reliability and validity. To tackle these challenges, we suggest transitioning from task-oriented evaluation to construct-oriented evaluation. Psychometrics, the science of psychological measurement, provides a rigorous methodology for identifying and measuring the latent constructs that underlie performance across multiple tasks. We discuss its merits, warn against potential pitfalls, and propose a framework to put it into practice. Finally, we explore future opportunities of integrating psychometrics with the evaluation of general-purpose AI systems.

The advent of large language models (LLMs) has revolutionized natural language processing, enabling the generation of coherent and contextually relevant human-like text. As LLMs increasingly power conversational agents used by the general public world-wide, the synthetic personality embedded in these models, by virtue of training on large amounts of human data, is becoming increasingly important. Since personality is a key factor determining the effectiveness of communication, we present a comprehensive method for administering and validating personality tests on widely-used LLMs, as well as for shaping personality in the generated text of such LLMs. Applying this method, we found: 1) personality measurements in the outputs of some LLMs under specific prompting configurations are reliable and valid; 2) evidence of reliability and validity of synthetic LLM personality is stronger for larger and instruction fine-tuned models; and 3) personality in LLM outputs can be shaped along desired dimensions to mimic specific human personality profiles. We discuss application and ethical implications of the measurement and shaping method, in particular regarding responsible AI.