About LEAP

LEAP consists of AI experts, forecasters with a demonstrated track record of accuracy on forecasting tasks (“superforecasters”), and the members of the general public. Across the first three waves of LEAP we received responses from:

• 339 experts across computer science, economics, industry, and policy
• 60 highly accurate forecasters (“superforecasters”), based on prior geopolitical forecasting tournaments
• 1,400 members of the public, largely consisting of especially engaged participants in previous research, reweighted to be nationally representative of the U.S.

We describe our panel and sampling procedure in greater detail in the “Panel Construction” section of the LEAP whitepaper.

Expert Sampling

LEAP targets prominent experts who policymakers, business and nonprofit leaders, and other stakeholders would be most inclined to consult regarding the progression of AI capabilities and its technological impact. Specifically, we include four expert communities.

1. We invite computer scientists researching topics in AI by including top-cited authors, stratified by age, and the authors of the top-rated papers at leading AI and ML conferences.
2. We include industry professionals, identified via their contributions to frontier models or employment at AI-related companies with extensive fundraising.
3. We identify leading economists, both across fields and within the subfield of economics focused on measuring the economic effects of AI and new technology. We include top-cited authors of papers on AI and technology, members of the US Economic Experts Panel (Clark Centre Forum 2025), and attendees of economics conferences on AI.
4. We identify research staff at think tanks and other institutions leading the discussion on AI development, policy, and impacts.

For more information on our sampling frame, see Appendix A of the LEAP whitepaper.

To better characterize these experts, our respondent sample includes:

• Top computer scientists. 41 of our 76 computer science experts (54%) are professors, and 30 of these 41 (73%) are from top-20 institutions (according to CSRankings.org). 23 (30%) had top-rated (top-40 or better) papers at NeurIPS or ICLR in recent years, and eight others (11%) are PhD students or postdocs who are highly cited according to our criteria. Ten (13%) are among the 200 top-cited authors in AI (according to OpenAlex). This category also includes researchers at academic and non-academic research institutions. Our CS respondents have a median of 7,100 citations (for the 95% of panelists for whom data is available).
• AI industry experts. 20 of our 76 industry respondents (26%) work for one of five leading AI companies: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, and Nvidia. 21 of the remaining industry respondents (28% of the total) work for either a top AI company (top-20 model providers, by training compute, as measured by EpochAI), were identified as contributors to top-15 LLMs according to training compute on Epoch or performance on Chatbot Arena, or work for one of the top-30 (by fundraising) AI-related companies (according to Crunchbase). The remaining respondents were recategorized from our CS literature sampling pools, referral sampling, or other categories. Our industry respondents have a median of 9,100 citations (for the 59% of panelists for whom data is available).
• Top AI economists. 54 of our 68 economist respondents (79%) are professors, and 30 (44%) are from top-50 economics institutions (according to RePEc). Our economist respondents have a median of 2,200 citations (for the 96% of panelists for whom data is available).
• Policy and think tank group. Of our 119 AI policy respondents, 75 (60%) work for the following most-represented organizations (unordered): Brookings, RAND, Epoch AI, Federation of American Scientists, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, AI Now, Carnegie Endowment, Foundation for American Innovation, Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and other related groups, GovAI, Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, Future of Life Institute, Institute for Law & AI, Center for a New American Security, Data & Society Research Institute, Abundance Institute, and the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
• TIME 100. Our panel includes 12 honorees from TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023 and 2024. TIME 100 honorees are categorized by their expertise and distributed among the above categories.