The LLM Benchmarking Leaderboards Are a Lie. Here’s What’s Actually Being Measured.
LLM benchmarking leaderboards look objective, but they’re secretly measuring something else entirely: who can afford to burn tokens. The real barrier to robust AI evaluation isn’t model sophistication β it’s inference cost. Well-funded organizations can run millions of queries to validate their claims, while independent researchers with better methodologies get priced out. A benchmark only one party can afford to run isn’t a benchmark. It’s a press release.