Global InferenceNet Initiative · NTU GIFTS

InferenceNet Challenge

AI Agents for Business, Finance and Social Science

Global InferenceNet Initiative sets out a vision of shared infrastructure for AI agents in business, finance and social science. InferenceNet Challenge advances this vision by building an open-source community, bringing together challenging problems, and developing a standard framework for model training and evaluation.

Nanyang Technological University The University of Hong Kong Shanghai University of Finance and Economics
DEV100 · 100 TASKS
v10 · 14 MODELS × 4 HARNESSES
Replay · illustrative
task.md01 · TASK

Using the household panel, estimate the effect of treat × post on log consumption with household and quarter fixed effects. Restrict to 2008–2012 and cluster standard errors by village. Report coefficient, SE and p-value.

Inputspanel.parquet
Reference valueswithheld from agent
Coefficient within tolerance Effect direction Significance level
INDEPENDENT EVALUATION
vs. withheld reference
evidence/01 · TASK

Month-end close review. Reconcile the general ledger against sub-ledgers, assess hedge and disposal treatments under policy, and link each correction proposal to the review workpapers.

Inputs6 source files
Deliverables.docx + .xlsx
Conclusions correct Evidence traceable No rule violations
INDEPENDENT EVALUATION
vs. task rubric
Inference Challenge

Both challenges test complete agent workflows: interpret domain requirements, plan and execute analysis, revise through tool feedback, and submit results for independent evaluation.

∴Scroll
01 / Inference Challenge

Inference Challenge

Challenge 1 · Dev100 · 100 tasksOpen-source soon

Econometric replication

Can an AI agent translate a research specification into a working analysis and recover the requested empirical result from the data?

100
Research tasks
coef · SE · p
Deliverable
Withheld
Reference results
Explore Challenge 1
Challenge 2 · Finance & HR demosPreview

Business Analysis & Deliverables

Can an AI agent reconcile business evidence, make defensible decisions and turn them into reports and workbooks that withstand review?

2
Demo cases
Word + Excel
Deliverable
Rubric
Review method
Explore Challenge 2

Each challenge has its own evaluation criteria. Task packages, submission rules and dates will be announced separately.

Subtracks, timeline and awards
How both challenges work

From requirements to independent evaluation

Challenge 1 · Econometric replicationChallenge 2 · Business Analysis & Deliverables
01 / 04

Workflow

Challenge 1

Inspect the data, construct the required sample and variables, implement the estimator, then debug and revise using execution feedback.

Challenge 2

Read source documents, reconcile records and rules, perform calculations, then reopen and revise the report and workbook.

02 / 04

Core difficulty

Challenge 1

Translate controls, interactions, fixed effects and clustered errors into code. A program can run successfully yet estimate the wrong quantity.

Challenge 2

Resolve inconsistent evidence and apply professional rules. Calculations, explanations and recommendations must agree across documents.

03 / 04

Deliverable

Challenge 1

A result file containing the target coefficient, standard error and p-value, computed by the agent’s analysis program.

Challenge 2

A Word report and Excel workbook with traceable evidence, calculations and explicit decisions, following the task’s format requirements.

04 / 04

Independent evaluation

Challenge 1

Compare the submitted statistics with withheld reference results, examining numerical agreement, effect direction and significance.

Challenge 2

Check the files against source evidence and task-specific rubrics, scoring correctness, traceability and violations of required rules.

WorkflowCore difficultyDeliverableIndependent evaluation
02 / Demonstrations

Agent demonstrations

See how agents work within InferenceNet’s task and evaluation framework to tackle research and business problems: interpreting requirements, calling tools, refining their work through feedback, and undergoing independent evaluation.

task0001 · replay.mp4Recorded replay
Hover to preview · click to play with sound
  1. 01Inspect data
  2. 02Write regression
  3. 03Revise on feedback
  4. 04Check vs. reference
Challenge 1 · Agent demo

Econometric replication

The agent inspects household panel data, implements the research specification in regression code, and revises it using execution feedback. The framework then runs the submitted program and checks the coefficient, standard error and p-value against reference results.

Explore Challenge 1
finance · month-end-close.mp4Recorded replay
Hover to preview · click to play with sound
  1. 01Review records
  2. 02Plan corrections
  3. 03Revise with tools
  4. 04Deliver & score
Challenge 2 · Agent demo

Business Analysis & Deliverables

The agent reviews financial records and accounting policies, plans month-end corrections, and revises its work using tool feedback. It delivers a Word report and Excel workpapers, which the framework evaluates against the task’s evidence and scoring criteria.

Explore Challenge 2
System map

Three layers, one challenge platform

Challenges supply the tasks, harnesses turn models into agents, and independent evaluation decides what counts. Hover a layer to trace it, or drag the model to turn it.

  1. L1

    Challenges

    Econometric replication and business analysis tasks, each with its own data and files.

    • Challenge 1
    • Challenge 2
    • Data files
    Explore the challenges
  2. L2

    Harnesses and agents

    Models act inside harnesses that supply context, tools and feedback. Dev100 compares 14 models across 4 harnesses.

    • Models
    • Harnesses
    Explore harnesses
  3. L3

    Evaluation and improvement

    Withheld references and rubrics score each run; results feed the leaderboard and self-evolving harness research.

    • Evaluation
    • Leaderboard
    • Self-evolving
    View Dev100 results
03 / Our aims

What InferenceNet Challenge builds

Four ways InferenceNet Challenge advances the Initiative: community collaboration, challenging problems, standard evaluation, and model training and improvement.

01

Open-source community

Connect researchers, developers and domain experts to share code, tools, methods and results. Help teams build on each other’s work, solve problems together and accelerate research and applications.

Collaborate with us
02

Challenging problems

Collect demanding problems from research and professional practice, with data, task materials, deliverables and evaluation criteria. Build reusable tasks that test agents’ ability to complete complex work.

Explore the challenges
03

Standard evaluation framework

Standardize task interfaces, execution records and independent evaluation protocols. Verify results against task-specific criteria so models and harnesses can be assessed reproducibly and compared under consistent conditions.

Explore the evaluation setup
04

Model training and improvement

Use task data, verified trajectories and failure feedback to study model training and harness optimization. Test improvements on new tasks, turning evaluation findings into evidence for better systems.

Explore training and improvement research
04 / Get involved

Build with us

We welcome benchmark tasks, domain partners and collaborators working on models, harnesses and evaluation.

Bring your domain expertise, a new challenge, an agent implementation or evaluation ideas. Work with the community to turn challenging problems into reusable tasks, reproducible evaluation and better agents.

What you can do now

01 Explore a challenge Review the task goals, source materials, expected deliverables and evaluation criteria to find a challenge you want to work on.In development
02 Propose a new challenge Bring a new domain or problem to the initiative. Define the scenario, goals, expected deliverables and how a successful solution can be verified.Submit a benchmark 03 Build an agent Configure a model, tools and a harness to tackle a challenge. Plan the workflow, run the analysis and check the resulting deliverables.Submit an agent / harness
04 Contribute tasks and data Enrich an existing challenge with task examples, input materials and reference results. Help document the sources and make the tasks reusable.In development
05 Improve evaluation Review scoring criteria, analyze failure cases and improve independent verification. Help make evaluations reproducible and comparisons meaningful.Submit a failure case
06 Study training and improvement Investigate how execution traces and feedback can improve model training and harness design, and test the resulting methods on new tasks.In development

Status and updatesLive

  1. Business Analysis & Deliverables preview.

    Two finance and HR cases follow agent workflows from task planning and evidence analysis to document delivery and independent review.

    Explore the new subtrack
  2. Challenge 1 · Dev100.

    The existing 100-task Dev100 set will be open-sourced for the econometric replication challenge.

  3. Dev100 development release.

    The v10 report covers 14 models and four harnesses on 100 development tasks. These are research results, not official challenge rankings.

    View Dev100 results
TBAChallenge task packages, rules, dates and submission channels are still to be announced.