Authors: Burak Gokturk, VP Research & Development; Rujun Han, Research Scientist; George Lee, Product Manager.
Today, the Google AI & Infrastructure team is announcing Physical-Engineering’s Last Exam (PLE), a new benchmark and open competition, developed in collaboration with Mercor, and built to test a frontier model’s ability to complete tasks in mechanical, electrical, civil and structural engineering.
To help the research community measure and improve how agents handle physical engineering work, we are releasing 29 public tasks, their grading tools, and an open competition leaderboard at ple-bench.com.
Frontier labs and the broader research community use model examinations to test AI’s progress in completing tasks in a specific discipline. Humanity’s Last Exam measures a model’s general knowledge. Agents’ Last Exam measures a model’s ability to complete digital professional work. Physical-Engineering’s Last Exam (PLE) measures a model’s ability to complete work that helps build the physical world. Physical engineers design skyscrapers, power grids, and computer chips we rely on, yet we could find no existing benchmark that tests whether frontier models can do that work end to end.
Why textbook benchmarks fall short for physical engineering
Frontier language models now score above 90% on many academic benchmarks. However, those benchmarks mostly test textbook-style questions, single tool calls, or small, self-contained design problems. For AI developers and researchers building agents for physical engineering, existing benchmarks do not show whether an agent can produce safe, code-compliant, and cost-effective designs under a licensed engineer’s review and control. As the demand for infrastructure development outpaces financing, there is a growing opportunity for agents to support engineers working to close this gap.
Inside PLE: Real-world tasks built with practicing engineers
PLE closes this evaluation gap with 85 long-horizon tasks across four core disciplines: mechanical (30 tasks), electrical (27 tasks), civil (18 tasks), and structural (10 tasks) engineering.
