Gary Marcus's March 2022 article argued pure scaling would not solve hallucinations or abstraction and concluded there are serious holes in the scaling argument.

Judge against the text of Marcus's March 2022 article (e.g., 'Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall', Nautilus, March 2022). True: the article argues that scaling alone would not solve hallucinations or unreliability and problems of abstraction or reasoning, and contains the words 'there are serious holes in the scaling argument' or near-identical wording. Mostly true: the article makes both arguments, but the quoted sentence differs slightly in wording, or appears as one point rather than as the conclusion. Mixed: the article makes only one of the two arguments (hallucinations or abstraction), or makes the argument without anything like the quoted conclusion. Mostly false: the article criticises scaling only in general terms, without connecting it to hallucinations or abstraction, and lacks the quoted line. False: no such March 2022 article exists, or it does not argue against scaling.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall - Nautilus Nautilus · 10 March 2022 Own record

   “There are serious holes in the scaling argument. To begin with, the measures that have scaled have not captured what we desperately need to improve: genuine comprehension.”

2. E2 Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall - Nautilus Nautilus · 10 March 2022 Own record

   “In the last several months, research from DeepMind and elsewhere on models even larger than GPT-3 have shown that scaling starts to falter on some measures, such as toxicity, truthfulness, reasoning, and common sense.”

3. E3 Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall - Nautilus Nautilus · 10 March 2022 Own record

   “Deep-learning systems are outstanding at interpolating between specific examples they have seen before, but frequently stumble when confronted with novelty.”

4. E4 Dialogue Origin: “Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall” “There Is No Wall” Quote Investigator · 4 January 2025

   “In conclusion, the phrase “Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall” appeared as the title of an article by Gary Marcus in March 2022.”

E4, an independent source, confirms that Marcus published "Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall" in March 2022. The article itself contains the exact sentence "There are serious holes in the scaling argument" (E1). It argues that scaling falters on truthfulness, reasoning and common sense (E2), and that deep learning stumbles when faced with novelty (E3). So both arguments the claim names appear, in substance, under the criteria's "unreliability" and "reasoning" wording. However, none of the quoted passages from the article uses the word "hallucinations". The quoted sentence opens a section of the argument rather than serving as its conclusion, which fits the "mostly true" criterion.