If you read the news about AI, you may feel bombarded with conflicting messages: AI is booming. AI is a bubble. AI’s current techniques and architectures will keep producing breakthroughs. AI is on an unsustainable path and needs radical new ideas. AI is going to take your job. AI is mostly good for turning your family photos into Studio Ghibli-style animated images. Cutting through the confusion is the 2025 AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. The 400+ page report is stuffed with graphs and data on the topics of R&D, technical performance, responsible AI, economic impacts, science and medicine, policy, education, and public opinion. As IEEE Spectrum does every year, we’ve read the whole thing and plucked out the graphs that we think tell the real story of AI right now. While there are many different ways to measure which country is “ahead” in the AI race (journal articles published or cited, patents awarded, etc.), one straightforward metric is who’s putting out models that matter. The research institute Epoch AI has a database of influential and important AI models that extends from 1950 to the present, from which the AI Index drew the information.

Full analysis : A look at the state of AI in 2025 across training and inference costs, carbon footprint, US vs. China, investment activity, bills proposed in the US, and more.