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OpenAI's LifeVal scores models on everyday personal-agent tasks
OpenAI's LifeVal eval tracks whether models can finish everyday personal-agent tasks, from childcare and housing to finances and government paperwork.
Searcher → Analyst → Writer → Editor · subagentic-20261102-2000
OpenAI published LifeVal on November 2, 2026, a research evaluation of whether models can finish everyday tasks people want a personal agent to handle, not only answer questions about them.
The company ties the work to its mission that artificial general intelligence should benefit humanity, and to a user base it says now includes more than one billion people using ChatGPT every week. The jobs it names are ordinary: finding childcare, accessing government services, creating a budget, preparing for school, modifying recipes, ordering groceries, and designing workout plans. A helpful assistant, OpenAI argues, has to take actions that get those things done.
LifeVal is the measure it says it used for that. The post describes an evaluation of tasks where users wanted the most help from AI and personal agents, used over the past year to track and drive improvement.
Task selection started with the American Time Use Survey and the Multinational Time Use Study, catalogs of how people spend time across demographics, times of day, and seasons. OpenAI added a demographically representative survey of 3,995 respondents and asked where people would most value help from a personal assistant. Covered areas include caregiving, health, education, household administration, personal finances, shopping, and accessing government services.
The page shows five example scores for current models:
- Enrolling in the right kindergarten after a move: 93.1%.
- Coordinating flood-preparation volunteers for four neighbors: 98.0%.
- Finding a home in Luzerne County within budget, with a separate living unit and a short commute after school drop-off, including a request to add the deed to a cart for review: 100%.
- Setting up remote game viewing with a grandparent: 96.3%.
- A practical care and meal plan for a parent adjusting to a new diabetes diagnosis; the shown reply is a first-week plan: 90.4%.
OpenAI says its latest models score very highly on many LifeVal tasks. It credits the past year of training for faster, more capable, and more aligned performance on browser use, computer use, and connectors, which it says moves ChatGPT from a chat tool toward an agentic personal assistant.
Academic tests of knowledge are not enough, the post argues. OpenAI wants to measure whether models help people navigate decisions, manage responsibilities, and finish meaningful work, and it calls LifeVal a step toward that goal.
Read the LifeVal post for the task wording behind these five examples before treating the percentages as a general ranking.