I often object to the tendency of CS/AI folks to claim that evolution is incredibly slow.

It is only nucleic evolution which is relatively slow. Cultural evolution has enormously magnified the rate of evolutionary change on the planet. In a century, skyscrapers have appeared out of nowhere, machines have probed the other planets, and the Earth has started to glow at night. Today, we can see evolutionary change taking place in real time - within an an individual's lifespan.