Recent Advances in Large Langauge Model Benchmarks against Data Contamination: From Static to Dynamic Evaluation
This is an incremental survey that provides insights for researchers and practitioners in AI/ML to improve LLM evaluation practices.
The paper tackles the problem of data contamination in large language model (LLM) benchmarking by analyzing the shift from static to dynamic evaluation methods, proposing design principles for dynamic benchmarks to address gaps in standardization.
Data contamination has received increasing attention in the era of large language models (LLMs) due to their reliance on vast Internet-derived training corpora. To mitigate the risk of potential data contamination, LLM benchmarking has undergone a transformation from static to dynamic benchmarking. In this work, we conduct an in-depth analysis of existing static to dynamic benchmarking methods aimed at reducing data contamination risks. We first examine methods that enhance static benchmarks and identify their inherent limitations. We then highlight a critical gap-the lack of standardized criteria for evaluating dynamic benchmarks. Based on this observation, we propose a series of optimal design principles for dynamic benchmarking and analyze the limitations of existing dynamic benchmarks. This survey provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of recent advancements in data contamination research, offering valuable insights and a clear guide for future research efforts. We maintain a GitHub repository to continuously collect both static and dynamic benchmarking methods for LLMs. The repository can be found at this link.