OpenAI’s SimpleQA tool for discerning genAI accuracy — right message, wrong messenger

OpenAI pretty much concedes this in the report: “In this work, we will sidestep the open-endedness of language models by considering only short, fact-seeking questions with a single answer. This reduction of scope is important because it makes measuring factuality much more tractable, albeit at the cost of leaving open research questions such as whether improved behavior on short-form factuality generalizes to long-form factuality.”

Later in the report, OpenAI elaborates: “A main limitation with SimpleQA is that while it is accurate, it only measures factuality under the constrained setting of short, fact-seeking queries with a single, verifiable answer. Whether the ability to provide factual short answers correlates with the ability to write lengthy responses filled with numerous facts remains an open research question.”

Here are the specifics: SimpleQA consists of 4,326 “short, fact-seeking questions.”