Every major AI paper seems to open with some version of "AI progress has been fast." And while that is obviously true, I have always found the claim frustratingly vague. Fast compared to what? Faster than we expected? This week, a report from Epoch AI gave us something rare: actual numbers. And the results are, frankly, extraordinary. The AI Digest and Epoch AI ran a forecasting survey throughout late 2024 and early 2025. They asked 421 people, many with serious forecasting