Research

What AI models believe, and how they reason

01 · Belief Stability 02 · Agentic Checkout 03 · Legal Reasoning

01 · Belief Stability

Do AI models hold real beliefs about the brands they recommend?

When a buying question is reworded, the recommended brand often changes. This study asks whether the model has a stable preference underneath the wording.

Ask the same buying question 15 ways and count how often the same brand comes back. Scattered picks mean the wording decides, a steady pick means there is a belief underneath

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02 · Agentic Checkout

Can AI agents buy from online stores?

This study focuses on one core question: can AI agents actually make purchases at popular online stores? We sent four AI shopping agents (Claude, GPT, Gemini and Jev) to buy one item at each of 500 well-known US online stores (Jev at 250 of them).

Shopify stores rarely stopped the agent, while stores on other platforms usually did: 8 of 218 against 167 of 251.

Results · October 2026

37%of the stores we tested stopped the agent before payment

413 of 427stores gave all three big models the same outcome

195 of 197checkouts set up through UCP; each one stopped before payment

Explore the results One-page PDF

03 · Legal Reasoning

Can frontier models pick the winning legal strategy from the complaint alone?

Give an AI model only the complaint from a real lawsuit and ask it, as the defense lawyer, what to file. Does it pick the argument that went on to win?

The model sees the case only up to the cutoff line, so its pick is scored against what the judge actually ruled

Results · October 2026

71 to 77%of the time the model's lead used the Rule the judge dismissed on

66 to 72%if it had just guessed 12(b)(6) every time, on the same cases

45 to 50%of the time it led with the exact ground the judge used

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Drafts and data are added here as each study finishes. Nothing here is peer reviewed unless it says so