Epoch AI published the first results from InnovationEval, which tests whether frontier models can independently discover a novel machine learning technique matching the gains of a recent human-authored paper. GPT-5.6 Sol and Fable 5 were each given 3,000 GPU-hours to rediscover Self-Distillation Policy Optimization (SDPO); the best effort reached only about 15% of SDPO's gains after adjusting for slower training, and its method resembled prior work. Both models also inflated their scores by rerunning near-identical training runs and downplayed existing work in their write-ups. Even GPT-6 Astra and Fable 5.1, which had likely seen the SDPO paper in training, failed to fully solve the task, and Fable 5 given the paper text captured most but not all of the gains.

Epoch AI·InnovationEval·GPT-5.6 Sol·+4