Why do benchmark results go up every release, always?

Reddit r/artificial News

Summary

A discussion post questions why AI benchmark scores consistently improve each release even when users perceive little real-world gains, asking whether providers game proprietary, closed-source benchmarks rather than genuinely improving models.

A lot of releases are clearly improvements, such as the initial fable release but for some the consensus seems to be that not much improved, or even in some cases the release was worse. Examples of this are Opus 5 (initial release) benching above Fable. Or GPT Sol 6.1 over Astra or 5.6. Is this just a case of misplaced perception? Or do these providers have a way of iterating on benchmark results without necessarily actually improving the real-world performance? Keeping in mind that some benchmarks are proprietary and closed source. If someone has some insight into what the loop is, would love to hear it.
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