A number of species are smarter than others, and some are getting there. Their 'always 0 progress' reading is wrong.
To put it another way, there is no average drift towards larger brains, but individual lineages do have trajectories up or down. Encephalization is one adaptation suite out of many possible ones, and depends on context.
"The Planet-of-the-Apes Hypothesis" Revisited --Will Intelligence be a Constant in the Universe?