PHYSICS
Intern-S1 44% Dropped Models solve 1,297 PhD qualifying exam physics problems across six subfields, 298 of them with images. Answers are checked by symbolic equivalence.
Shanghai AI Lab Intern-S1 reports it as Physics.
In the authors’ words
We introduce Physics, a benchmark for evaluating foundation models on advanced physics problem solving. It contains 1034 annotated, open-ended problems from PhD-qualifying exams across six core physics domains. Solving these problems requires applying domain-specific knowledge to physical setups and carrying out multi-step mathematical reasoning. Each problem includes a worked solution and independently checked reference answers. An LLM-based grading protocol evaluates individual answers and complete multi-part problems, supporting numeric, symbolic, and text responses. We evaluate 53 proprietary and open-weight models. On test problems without figures, high accuracy is concentrated in a small group of thinking models, with the strongest open-weight models approaching proprietary performance. Most open-weight models still solve fewer than half of these problems. Our analysis of Qwen3.5-9B reveals failures in applying physics knowledge and interpreting figures, with misread figures affecting several subquestions.
- Level
- Expert Specialists with years of training, often over hours of work
- Scored
- Checked automatically A program checks the result against an answer key, unit tests or the expected final state.
- Answers
- Short answer A number, word or short string matched to a key.
Intern-S1 leads with 44%
Best score per model as labs report them in their own cards. Labs pick their own settings, so these compare less cleanly than independent runs.
- 1 Intern-S1 44%
| # | Model | Score | Setting | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intern-S1 | 44% | Jul 2025 | Model card |
Scores over time
All the scores we have, one dot each, so a model tested at several settings appears more than once.
No launch post has listed it since Jul 2025
Launch posts from every lab that has listed it, one tick per post. Tall colored ticks include it, and short gray ones leave it out.
| Date | Launch post | Score | As the post writes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Jul 2025 | Intern-S1 | 44 | Physics |
One system card reports it
Besides launch posts, we read the system cards, model cards and technical reports labs publish with a release. They report far more, including safety and frontier-risk tests.
| Date | Document | Score | As the document writes it | Section |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Aug 2025 | Intern-S1 technical report | 44 | Physics, PHYSICS by Feng et al. (Table 4) | Capabilities |
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