Sebastian Pokutta

Jennifer Haase, Jana Gonnermann-Müller, Paul H. P. Hanel et al.

How much of LLM output variance is explained by prompts versus model choice versus stochasticity through sampling? We answer this by evaluating 12 LLMs on 10 creativity prompts with 100 samples each (N = 12,000). For output quality (originality), prompts explain 36.43% of variance, comparable to model choice (40.94%). But for output quantity (fluency), model choice (51.25%) and within-LLM variance (33.70%) dominate, with prompts explaining only 4.22%. Prompts are powerful levers for steering output quality, but given the substantial within-LLM variance (10-34%), single-sample evaluations risk conflating sampling noise with genuine prompt or model effects.

Jennifer Haase, Sebastian Pokutta

As large language models (LLMs) transition from static tools to fully agentic systems, their potential for transforming social science research has become increasingly evident. This paper introduces a structured framework for understanding the diverse applications of LLM-based agents, ranging from simple data processors to complex, multi-agent systems capable of simulating emergent social dynamics. By mapping this developmental continuum across six levels, the paper clarifies the technical and methodological boundaries between different agentic architectures, providing a comprehensive overview of current capabilities and future potential. It highlights how lower-tier systems streamline conventional tasks like text classification and data annotation, while higher-tier systems enable novel forms of inquiry, including the study of group dynamics, norm formation, and large-scale social processes. However, these advancements also introduce significant challenges, including issues of reproducibility, ethical oversight, and the risk of emergent biases. The paper critically examines these concerns, emphasizing the need for robust validation protocols, interdisciplinary collaboration, and standardized evaluation metrics. It argues that while LLM-based agents hold transformative potential for the social sciences, realizing this promise will require careful, context-sensitive deployment and ongoing methodological refinement. The paper concludes with a call for future research that balances technical innovation with ethical responsibility, encouraging the development of agentic systems that not only replicate but also extend the frontiers of social science, offering new insights into the complexities of human behavior.

Jana Gonnermann-Müller, Jennifer Haase, Nicolas Leins et al.

Classrooms are becoming increasingly heterogeneous, comprising learners with diverse performance and motivation levels, language proficiencies, and learning differences such as dyslexia and ADHD. While teachers recognize the need for differentiated instruction, growing workloads create substantial barriers, making differentiated instruction an ideal that is often unrealized in practice. Current AI educational tools, which promise differentiated materials, are predominantly student-facing and performance-centric, ignoring other aspects that shape learning outcomes. We introduce FACET, a teacher-facing multi-agent framework designed to address these gaps by supporting differentiation that accounts for motivation, performance, and learning differences. Developed with educational stakeholders from the outset, the framework coordinates four specialized agents, including learner simulation, diagnostic assessment, material generation, and evaluation within a teacher-in-the-loop design. School principals (N = 30) shaped system requirements through participatory workshops, while in-service K-12 teachers (N = 70) evaluated material quality. Mixed-methods evaluation demonstrates strong perceived value for inclusive differentiation. Practitioners emphasized both the urgent need arising from classroom heterogeneity and the importance of maintaining pedagogical autonomy as a prerequisite for adoption. We discuss implications for future school deployment and outline partnerships for longitudinal classroom implementation.

Nico Pelleriti, Sree Harsha Nelaturu, Zhanke Zhou et al.

Recent work pairs LLMs with evolutionary search to iteratively generate, modify, and select code using task-specific feedback. These systems have produced strong results in mathematical discovery and algorithm design, yet a fundamental question remains: what do they actually evolve? Progress is typically summarized by the best score a run reaches under a task-specific evaluator, but that score can reflect several different mechanisms: new algorithmic structure, re-tuning an existing strategy, recombining ideas already in the model's internal knowledge, or overfitting to the evaluator. Distinguishing these mechanisms requires inspecting the search process itself, not only its final outcome. We introduce EvoTrace, a dataset of evolutionary coding traces spanning four evolutionary frameworks, reasoning and non-reasoning models, and 16 tasks across mathematics and algorithm design. To analyze these traces, we develop EvoReplay, a replay-based methodology that reconstructs the local search states behind high-scoring solutions and tests controlled interventions, including adjusting constants, removing program components and substituting models or prompting contexts. We annotate every code edit in EvoTrace with one of nine recurring edit types using an LLM-as-judge pipeline validated against blind human re-annotation. Across EvoTrace, most score gains come from a small subset of these edit types. We further find a deterministic cycling pattern: about 30% of code lines added during search are byte-identical re-introductions of previously-deleted lines, present throughout nearly every run. These results show that benchmark gains in evolutionary coding agents can arise from qualitatively different mechanisms, only some of which correspond to new algorithmic structure. EvoTrace enables more diagnostic evaluation of evolutionary coding agents beyond final benchmark scores.

Jennifer Haase, Paul H. P. Hanel, Sebastian Pokutta

Following the widespread adoption of ChatGPT in early 2023, numerous studies reported that large language models (LLMs) can match or even surpass human performance in creative tasks. However, it remains unclear whether LLMs have become more creative over time, and how consistent their creative output is. In this study, we evaluated 14 widely used LLMs -- including GPT-4, Claude, Llama, Grok, Mistral, and DeepSeek -- across two validated creativity assessments: the Divergent Association Task (DAT) and the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence of increased creative performance over the past 18-24 months, with GPT-4 performing worse than in previous studies. For the more widely used AUT, all models performed on average better than the average human, with GPT-4o and o3-mini performing best. However, only 0.28% of LLM-generated responses reached the top 10% of human creativity benchmarks. Beyond inter-model differences, we document substantial intra-model variability: the same LLM, given the same prompt, can produce outputs ranging from below-average to original. This variability has important implications for both creativity research and practical applications. Ignoring such variability risks misjudging the creative potential of LLMs, either inflating or underestimating their capabilities. The choice of prompts affected LLMs differently. Our findings underscore the need for more nuanced evaluation frameworks and highlight the importance of model selection, prompt design, and repeated assessment when using Generative AI (GenAI) tools in creative contexts.

Jennifer Haase, Paul H. P. Hanel, Sebastian Pokutta

This paper introduces S-DAT (Synthetic-Divergent Association Task), a scalable, multilingual framework for automated assessment of divergent thinking (DT) -a core component of human creativity. Traditional creativity assessments are often labor-intensive, language-specific, and reliant on subjective human ratings, limiting their scalability and cross-cultural applicability. In contrast, S-DAT leverages large language models and advanced multilingual embeddings to compute semantic distance -- a language-agnostic proxy for DT. We evaluate S-DAT across eleven diverse languages, including English, Spanish, German, Russian, Hindi, and Japanese (Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana), demonstrating robust and consistent scoring across linguistic contexts. Unlike prior DAT approaches, the S-DAT shows convergent validity with other DT measures and correct discriminant validity with convergent thinking. This cross-linguistic flexibility allows for more inclusive, global-scale creativity research, addressing key limitations of earlier approaches. S-DAT provides a powerful tool for fairer, more comprehensive evaluation of cognitive flexibility in diverse populations and can be freely assessed online: https://sdat.iol.zib.de/.

Jennifer Haase, Finn Klessascheck, Jan Mendling et al.

Large language models (LLMs) have become increasingly embedded in organizational workflows. This has raised concerns over their energy consumption, financial costs, and data sovereignty. While performance benchmarks often celebrate cutting-edge models, real-world deployment decisions require a broader perspective: when is a smaller, locally deployable model "good enough"? This study offers an empirical answer by evaluating eleven proprietary and open-weight LLMs across ten everyday occupational tasks, including summarizing texts, generating schedules, and drafting emails and proposals. Using a dual-LLM-based evaluation framework, we automated task execution and standardized evaluation across ten criteria related to output quality, factual accuracy, and ethical responsibility. Results show that GPT-4o delivers consistently superior performance but at a significantly higher cost and environmental footprint. Notably, smaller models like Gemma-3 and Phi-4 achieved strong and reliable results on most tasks, suggesting their viability in contexts requiring cost-efficiency, local deployment, or privacy. A cluster analysis revealed three model groups -- premium all-rounders, competent generalists, and limited but safe performers -- highlighting trade-offs between quality, control, and sustainability. Significantly, task type influenced model effectiveness: conceptual tasks challenged most models, while aggregation and transformation tasks yielded better performances. We argue for a shift from performance-maximizing benchmarks to task- and context-aware sufficiency assessments that better reflect organizational priorities. Our approach contributes a scalable method to evaluate AI models through a sustainability lens and offers actionable guidance for responsible LLM deployment in practice.