Benjamin Todd at Substack:
The usual complaint about AI is that it’s overhyped. But over the last 18 months, almost everyone made the opposite mistake: they expected AI to progress more slowly than it did.
Superforecasters, the people with the best track record at predicting geopolitical events, underestimated it most, as did the general public. AI experts did better, but were still too slow. Mostly, only AI company leaders were too optimistic, and only a little. If you’d assumed what they said would happen in six months would actually happen in six to 18, you’d have done pretty well.
I made the same mistake. In March 2025 I published “Will we have AGI by 2030?”, arguing there was a significant chance we would. Many accused the piece of buying into AI CEO hype. Having revisited it, I think the opposite: I underestimated the rate of progress.
Here’s an overview of what held up, what didn’t, and whose forecasts look best overall.
More here.