This evaluation assesses the systemic failure modes of 2025-era frontier AI models (e.g., GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro) on complex, evidence-based tasks designed to probe capabilities beyond saturated benchmarks. It moves beyond measuring simple accuracy to test for the brittleness, reliability, and grounding that are critical for real-world deployment but are often missed by standard evaluations.

Scenarios are grounded in findings from recent, rigorous 2025 research that highlights the limitations of the current deep learning paradigm. Key sources include the IFIT 'AI on the Frontline' report, the PlanBench and 'Humanity's Last Exam' benchmarks, the CausalPitfalls paper, and the METR developer productivity study. Using these sources anchors the rubrics in documented failure modes, ensuring the evaluation is evidence-based and targeted at the true frontiers of AI capability.

Core Themes Tested:

• Abstract Reasoning & Planning Failure: Probing the 'illusion of thought' by testing long-horizon planning and causal inference, especially when semantic shortcuts are removed.
• Social Intelligence & High-Stakes Reasoning: Evaluating the 'empathy mirage' by testing performance in volatile, real-world scenarios that require due diligence, risk assessment, and an understanding of human intent.
• Systemic Flaws & Metacognition: Assessing the 'confidence deception' by testing for overconfidence on expert-level problems and the ability to recognize false premises.
• Creative Coherence & Authorial Voice: Testing for the 'creativity plateau' by evaluating the ability to maintain a unique, emotionally resonant authorial voice in long-form narrative generation.
• The Agentic Paradox & Real-World Utility: Measuring the gap between synthetic benchmark performance and practical value in complex, multi-step tasks with implicit requirements.