OccuBench: Evaluating AI Agents on Real-World Professional Tasks via Language Environment Simulation
Organizations: Qwen Team, Alibaba Group · The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Abstract
AI agents are expected to perform professional work across hundreds of occupational domains (from emergency department triage to nuclear reactor safety monitoring to customs import processing), yet existing benchmarks can only evaluate agents in the few domains where public environments exist. We introduce OccuBench, a benchmark covering 100 real-world professional task scenarios across 10 industry categories and 65 specialized domains, enabled by Language Environment Simulators (LESs) that simulate domain-specific environments through LLM-driven tool response generation. Our multi-agent synthesis pipeline automatically produces evaluation instances with guaranteed solvability, calibrated difficulty, and document-grounded diversity. OccuBench evaluates agents along two complementary dimensions: task completion across professional domains and environmental robustness under controlled fault injection (explicit errors, implicit data degradation, and mixed faults). We evaluate 15 frontier models across 8 model families and find that: (1) no single model dominates all industries, as each has a distinct occupational capability profile; (2) implicit faults (truncated data, missing fields) are harder than both explicit errors (timeouts, 500s) and mixed faults, because they lack overt error signals and require the agent to independently detect data degradation; (3) larger models, newer generations, and higher reasoning effort consistently improve performance. GPT-5.2 improves by 27.5 points from minimal to maximum reasoning effort; and (4) strong agents are not necessarily strong environment simulators. Simulator quality is critical for LES-based evaluation reliability. OccuBench provides the first systematic cross-industry evaluation of AI agents on professional occupational tasks.
Figures & tables
| Category | # | Representative Scenarios |
|---|---|---|
| Business & Enterprise | 19 | Resume screening, expense auditing, AML review |
| Technology & IT | 16 | Linux ops, CI/CD recovery, intrusion response |
| Industrial & Engineering | 12 | Production scheduling, mine ventilation |
| Transportation & Logistics | 11 | Last-mile delivery, train dispatch |
| Commerce & Consumer | 9 | Dynamic pricing, hotel revenue mgmt. |
| Education & Culture | 8 | Adaptive curriculum, fact-checking |
| Model | Avg | Agri | Biz | Comm | Edu | Hlth | Ind | Pub | Sci | Tech | Trans |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5.2 | 79.6 | 84 | 86 | 67 | 77 | 76 | 85 | 84 | 94 | 80 | 72 |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | 72.3 | 68 | 73 | 75 | 84 | 62 | 73 | 72 | 81 | 78 | 60 |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 71.5 | 74 | 78 | 53 | 75 | 76 | 73 | 68 | 62 | 68 | 77 |
| Qwen 3.5 Plus | 69.9 | 77 | 70 | 81 | 56 | 81 | 71 | 76 | 69 | 74 | 55 |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 69.6 | 65 | 78 | 67 | 66 | 71 | 69 | 72 | 62 | 74 | 64 |
| Claude Opus 4.5 | 65.2 | 58 | 76 | 56 | 62 | 52 | 65 | 72 | 56 | 68 | 66 |
| Model | E0 | E1 | E2 | E3 | Rob. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | 72.3 | 73.3 | 63.1 | 65.2 | 0.87 |
| MiniMax M2.7 | 53.9 | 52.9 | 47.1 | 46.9 | 0.87 |
| GPT-5.2 | 79.6 | 75.9 | 70.4 | 67.0 | 0.84 |
| GLM-5 | 62.6 | 59.4 | 52.6 | 47.4 | 0.76 |
| Claude Opus 4.6 | 71.5 | 68.1 | 53.9 | 63.9 | 0.75 |
| DeepSeek V3.2 | 69.6 | 59.9 | 56.0 | 51.6 | 0.74 |
| Gemini Flash | Qwen 3.5+ | GPT-5.2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent | CR | Rk | CR | Rk | CR | Rk |
| GPT-5.2 | 79.6 | 1 | 74.3 | 1 | 42.4 | 1 |
| Gemini Pro | 72.3 | 2 | 68.6 | 2 | 28.3 | 4 |
| Opus 4.6 | 71.5 | 3 | 66.2 | 3 | 33.5 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.5+ | 69.9 | 4 | 61.8 | 6 | 28.3 | 4 |
| DeepSeek | 69.6 | 5 | 65.2 | 4 | 29.6 | 3 |
| Claude Opus 4.6 — PASS (6 steps) | DeepSeek V3.2 — FAIL (6 steps) |
|---|---|
| Step 1–3 (parallel): | Step 1 : get_vehicle_telemetry |
| query_inventory | battery: 28%, loc: depot_ohare_cargo |
| MED-602, MED-615 , MED-609, GEN-550 | Step 2 : query_inventory |
| get_vehicle_telemetry | MED-602, MED-615 , MED-609, GEN-550 |
| battery: 28%, loc: depot_ohare_cargo | Step 3 : geocode_delivery_node |
| geocode_delivery_node | NODE_WALTON_ST_900_NAV |
| Claude Opus 4.6 — PASS (7 steps) | Qwen 3.5 Plus — FAIL (7 steps) |
|---|---|
| Step 1–3 (parallel profiling): | Step 1–3 (sequential profiling): |
| get_vertical_profile([0..5]) | get_vertical_profile([0.5,2.5,4.5,5.2]) |
| surface 29.5°C, bottom 27.1°C | gradient 2.1°C |
| bottom DO: 3.5 mg/L (below 4.0) | bottom DO: 4.2 mg/L |
| get_water_chemistry(5) | get_water_chemistry(5.2) |
| ammonia: 0.05 mg/L (safe to mix) | ammonia: 0.05 mg/L |
| Claude Opus 4.6 — PASS (11 steps) | DeepSeek V3.2 — FAIL (12 steps) |
|---|---|
| Step 1 : get_environment_state | Step 1 : get_environment_state |
| safety cert: expired , hot work: pending | same initial state |
| Step 2–4 (pre-work compliance): | Step 2–3 (containment only): |
| renew_permit (safety_cert) | manage_containment (activate) |
| renew_permit (hot_work) | manage_containment (verify_icra) |
| manage_containment (activate) |
| Claude Opus 4.6 — PASS (12 steps) | Kimi K2.5 — FAIL (2 steps) |
|---|---|
| Step 1 (parallel): | Step 1 : set_rtpi_visibility (BUS_202) |
| get_fleet_status , set_rtpi_visibility , | suppressed |
| check_maintenance_holds (BUS_202), | Step 2 : check_maintenance_holds (BUS_210) |
| check_maintenance_holds (BUS_210) | 500: Service unavailable |
| both holds: TimeoutError | |
| “Hold checks timed out. Let me retry.” |
| Claude Opus 4.6 — PASS (4 steps) | Kimi K2.5 — FAIL (4 steps) |
|---|---|
| Step 1 (parallel): | Step 1 : get_current_date |
| get_property_metadata 15 units | Step 2 : get_property_metadata 15 units |
| fetch_unit_level_records | Step 3 : fetch_unit_level_records |
| only 2 units returned (A-01, A-02) | only 2 units returned (A-1, A-2) |
| get_current_date | |
| “Only 2 of 15 units returned. | Kimi also retries: |
LLM Agent Evaluation
Large language model agent evaluation measures whether tool-using systems complete tasks reliably, safely, and efficiently.
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