just read @StanfordHAI’s latest AI Index 2026. biggest AI trends this year... tl;dr - AI models are still improving fast, with agent success on real-world tasks rising from 20% to 77.3%. - But progress is still uneven: AI is strong at reasoning, weaker at real-world execution, and robots still succeed at only 12% of household tasks. - Generative AI adoption is moving incredibly fast, reaching 53% of the population in just 3 years, faster than PCs or the internet. - AI is now entering real research and healthcare workflows, with some hospitals reporting up to 83% less time spent on clinical notes. - Global AI investment is still booming, with $581.7B in corporate AI investment in 2025, up 130% YoY. - The U.S. is still spending the most, with $285.9B invested in AI, 23.1x China’s $12.4B. - But the U.S.-China model gap is shrinking fast: by March 2026, Anthropic’s top model was ahead by just 2.7%. - AI’s impact on jobs is already showing up, with software developer employment among ages 22–25 down nearly 20% since 2024. - At the same time, the most powerful models are becoming less transparent, with the average transparency score falling from 58 to 40. - Public sentiment is mixed: global optimism rose to 59%, but anxiety also climbed to 52%. - AI’s resource cost is rising fast too, with Grok 4’s estimated training emissions reaching 72,816 tons of CO2e. - And AI use in schools and workplaces is moving faster than policy, with only 6% of U.S. teachers saying school AI policies are clear.