# OBI-Bench finds the best of 23 large multimodal models deciphering at about the level of untrained people, and EVOBC's…

> OBI-Bench finds the best of 23 large multimodal models deciphering at about the level of untrained people, and EVOBC's evolution-chain baseline scores…

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/evidence/EVD0DEDTJ2A3HW3/obi-bench-finds-the-best-of-23-large-multimodal-models  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Unread oracle bone characters](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered)Evidence

Evidence · Unread oracle bone characters

# OBI-Bench finds the best of 23 large multimodal models deciphering at about the level of untrained people, and EVOBC's…

OBI-Bench finds the best of 23 large multimodal models deciphering at about the level of untrained people, and EVOBC's evolution-chain baseline scores 16.7 percent top-1 on held-out read graphs.

Supported0

## What it means

Key question[What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/questions/QST0DEDQEESA0GT/what-are-the-roughly-3-000-unread-oracle-bone-graphs-and-how)

6 answers, none ahead yet

**Open** unchanged

Answer this evidence bears on[Models will propose readings experts confirm](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/answers/ANS0DEDS3NDW5K3/models-will-propose-readings-experts-confirm)

Counts against1 for, 1 against

**Still possible** unchanged

## Next steps 3

1

Download HUST-OBC (Figshare 10.6084/m9.figshare.25040543.v3), tabulate the 9,411 undeciphered classes by image count and source, and cluster them with a period-aware image-similarity merge; report how many distinct unread classes remain and how many are singletons.

~16 h

[On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/questions/QST0DEDQEESA0GT/what-are-the-roughly-3-000-unread-oracle-bone-graphs-and-how)

**—** not judged

2

Using CHANT or Yinqi Wenyuan transcriptions, classify a random sample of 300 unread graphs by the slot they occupy in the divination formula (diviner name, ancestor, place after a hunting verb, verb, object, modifier) and estimate the share that occur only in name slots, with a confidence interval.

~24 h

[On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/questions/QST0DEDQEESA0GT/what-are-the-roughly-3-000-unread-oracle-bone-graphs-and-how)

**—** not judged

3

Compile the list of readings accepted by the National Museum of Chinese Writing since 2016 (Jiang Yubin 2018, the 2023 batch including Zhou Zhongbing and Li Chuntao, Chen Jian and Xie Mingwen 2024) with their graphs and papers, as the held-out test set for any computational method.

~6 h

[On: What are the roughly 3,000 unread oracle-bone graphs, and how many of them can ever be read?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/questions/QST0DEDQEESA0GT/what-are-the-roughly-3-000-unread-oracle-bone-graphs-and-how)

**—** not judged

Ranked by how likely each is to move the key question, for the time it takes

## Sources 3

[An open dataset for the evolution of oracle bone characters: EVOBC](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDGB3QH6XA/an-open-dataset-for-the-evolution-of-oracle-bone-characters)

Guan et al. 2024

SRC

[OBI-Bench: Can LMMs Aid in Study of Ancient Script on Oracle Bones?](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDGRVJARQR/obi-bench-can-lmms-aid-in-study-of-ancient-script-on-oracle)

Chen et al. 2025

SRC

[Towards Computational Chinese Paleography](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0DEDGQBEJ1T5/towards-computational-chinese-paleography)

Ma 2026

SRC

## Cite it

```
Mysteries Department. (2026). OBI-Bench finds the best of 23 large multimodal models deciphering at about the level of untrained people, and EVOBC's… [Evidence EVD0DEDTJ2A3HW3]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/EVD0DEDTJ2A3HW3
```

Key

**EVD** 0DEDTJ2A3HW3

Kind

Evidence

Tier

Supported

Found in

[Session 1](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/oracle-bone-undeciphered/sessions/SES0DEDVWXKJN4C/session-1-the-unread-oracle-bone-characters-seeded-corpus) · 31 Oct 2026

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