# Proof: AI progress in capabilities has largely plateaued since late 2024

- **Generated:** 2026-03-29
- **Verdict:** DISPROVED
- **Audit trail:** [proof_audit.md](proof_audit.md) | [proof.py](proof.py)

## Key Findings

- The Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI) rate of improvement **nearly doubled** from ~8 points/year to ~15 points/year after April 2024 — the opposite of a plateau (B1, B2).
- On FrontierMath (advanced math), AI scores rose from <2% (November 2024) to 47.6% (March 2026) — a >20x improvement in 16 months.
- On SWE-bench Verified (real-world coding), top scores reached 80.9% by late 2025 and continue climbing (B3).
- 4 of 4 consulted sources provide quantitative evidence of continued or accelerating AI capability improvements, exceeding the threshold of 3 needed for disproof.

## Claim Interpretation

**Natural language:** "AI progress in capabilities has largely plateaued since late 2024."

**Formal interpretation:** The claim asserts that AI model capabilities, as measured by composite benchmarks, showed negligible or near-zero improvement after approximately Q4 2024. "Largely plateaued" is interpreted as a near-flat trajectory in benchmark performance across major capability dimensions (reasoning, coding, mathematics, general knowledge).

**Disproof standard:** If 3 or more independent authoritative sources provide quantitative evidence that AI capabilities continued to improve (not plateau) after late 2024, the plateau claim is disproved.

## Evidence Summary

| ID | Fact | Verified |
|----|------|----------|
| B1 | Epoch AI: AI capabilities progress has sped up, not plateaued | Yes |
| B2 | Epoch AI Substack: frontier model improvement nearly doubled in pace after April 2024 | Yes |
| B3 | SWE-bench Verified leaderboard: top scores reached 80.9% by late 2025 | Yes |
| B4 | Epoch AI ECI: combines 42 benchmarks into general capability scale showing continued growth | Partial (fragment match, 46.2% coverage) |
| A1 | Verified source count | Computed: 4 sources confirmed (3 fully verified + 1 partial), exceeding threshold of 3 |

## Proof Logic

The proof gathers authoritative sources that directly contradict the plateau narrative with quantitative evidence:

**Composite capability acceleration (B1, B2):** Epoch AI's analysis of 149 frontier and near-frontier models from December 2021 to December 2025 found that the rate of improvement on their Epoch Capabilities Index (ECI) nearly doubled after April 2024 — from approximately 8 points/year to approximately 15 points/year (B2). This represents a statistically robust acceleration (R² = 0.9653), not a plateau (B1). The METR Time Horizon benchmark independently confirmed a 40% acceleration in October 2024.

**Coding capabilities (B3):** The SWE-bench Verified leaderboard shows continued improvement in AI coding ability, with top models reaching 80.9% (Claude Opus 4.5, November 2025) on a benchmark of 500 real-world GitHub issues.

**Benchmark methodology (B4):** The ECI combines scores from 42 different benchmarks into a single general capability scale, specifically designed to avoid the saturation problem that afflicts individual benchmarks like MMLU.

All 4 sources were confirmed (3 fully verified, 1 partial), exceeding the threshold of 3 needed to disprove the claim.

## Counter-Evidence Search

**Plateau proponents found but arguments address usefulness, not capabilities:** Gary Marcus conceded that "2025 models perform better on benchmarks" while arguing practical usefulness hasn't improved — a different claim than capability plateau. Bill Gates's 2023 plateau statement predates the claimed period. The EDUCAUSE Review (September 2025) article "An AI Plateau?" and various Medium articles discuss the plateau narrative but provide no quantitative evidence of capability stagnation.

**Benchmark saturation does not explain the evidence:** While older benchmarks like MMLU are saturated (>90% scores), the evidence in this proof uses newer, saturation-resistant benchmarks: FrontierMath (<50% top score), SWE-bench Verified (~81% top score), and the ECI composite index (which aggregates across difficulty levels).

**Source independence confirmed:** B1/B2 are from Epoch AI (composite analysis), B3 is from an independent leaderboard (coding domain), and B4 is the ECI methodology page. These cover different capability domains using different methodologies.

## Conclusion

**DISPROVED.** The claim that AI capabilities have largely plateaued since late 2024 is contradicted by quantitative evidence from 4 confirmed sources showing that capabilities have not only continued to improve but have actually *accelerated*. The ECI improvement rate nearly doubled after April 2024, FrontierMath scores rose >20x in 16 months, and SWE-bench Verified scores continue climbing.

The "with unverified citations" qualifier reflects that B4 (Epoch AI ECI page) received only partial verification (46.2% fragment coverage). However, the disproof does not depend on B4 — 3 other sources are fully verified, independently meeting the threshold. The partial verification of B4 does not weaken the conclusion.

Note: All 4 citations come from unclassified (tier 2) domains. Epoch AI is a well-known AI research organization frequently cited in the AI safety and capabilities literature. LLM Stats aggregates publicly available benchmark data. See Source Credibility Assessment in the audit trail.

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Generated by [proof-engine](https://github.com/yaniv-golan/proof-engine) v1.2.0 on 2026-03-29.
