Labeler Agreement Check: If Two Trained Labelers Can't Agree, the Rubric Is the Bug
blaizedsouza · x · 2026-09-13
A practical checklist for label-quality assurance in AI evals: if two trained people can't agree on a case, the rubric — not the model — is the bug, and a noisy label set makes every model look random.
The agreement cheatsheet:
- Double-label a slice of cases
- Compute agreement per rubric item
- Send disputes to a referee
- Rewrite items with low agreement
- Retrain labelers on new wording
- Never ship a score built on noise
Key point: safety items need higher agreement thresholds than tone items. Ask yourself: do two labelers in your process currently see the same case?
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