One in five US workers say AI now does work they once handed to a coworker or contractor, per a new Epoch AI/Ipsos survey of 1,106 employed adults.

Even with automated AI R&D producing millions of virtual researchers, progress may be capped by our ability to divide, coordinate, and recombine their work. Epoch AI on why parallelization technology is a missing parameter in intelligence explosion models.

Proposing a new way to track AI research automation

A simple taxonomy of the main proposals for post-AGI universal redistribution.

Investment spending on AI data centers, hardware, and networking together amounted to 1.4% of US GDP in Q1 2026, up from 0.7% — a rapid rise driven by AI infrastructure that has made the buildout a leading driver of growth in US private investment.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI used just 20-30% of global AI compute in 2025, despite launching the AI boom. Epoch AI's analysis of frontier lab compute allocation and growth trajectories through 2027.

What might explain AI researcher pay, and why it matters

We surveyed over 2,000 Americans on how they use AI at work: who uses it, how much, which services, and whether it's replacing or creating tasks.

These benchmarks track a wide range of digital work. Progress will correlate with economic utility, but tasks are too self-contained to indicate full automation.

Beyond benchmarks as leading indicators for task automation