Not sure about the level of irony here, but I keep hearing models have plateaued since a while now, but I keep being impressed with the latest model performance.

The models have not plateaued, and they are not even mildly close to any sort of ceiling.

Right now the barrier is data and compute.

Quality data can be created synthetically at an exponential rate as models improve. Humans are actively feeding them with private IP.

Compute advancements will begin to skyrocket as we unlock photonic computing and materials science advancements and scale up chip fabs. This is also compounding because the AI is accelerating the pace of research, testing, development, manufacturing, etc.

It's a big self-accelerating feedback loop. There is no plateau.