Claims

Prediction · AI capabilities

“GPT-4 will still, like its predecessors, be a bull in a china shop, reckless and hard to control.”

Gary Marcus, author · 25 December 2022 · What to Expect When You're Expecting … GPT-4 (Marcus on AI)

GPT-4 will still be reckless and hard to control, making a significant number of stupid errors.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

The second judge said resolved true; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

A prediction about GPT-4 once released (March 2023); judge it at roughly one year after release (2024-03). The claim is that GPT-4, like its predecessors, would be reckless and hard to control and would make a significant number of stupid errors. True: evaluations and documented use show GPT-4 still frequently produced confident errors and hallucinations, was jailbroken or behaved unpredictably despite controls, and committed clear basic blunders. OpenAI's own GPT-4 technical report or system card acknowledging such limitations counts. Mostly true: errors and controllability problems persist and are well documented, but are clearly reduced compared with predecessors, so 'still like its predecessors' is somewhat overstated. Mixed: errors persist but controllability is reported as largely improved, or the reverse. Mostly false: there are only occasional errors and GPT-4 is broadly reported as reliable and controllable. False: GPT-4 is shown to make few basic errors and to be reliably controllable.

Evidence

1. GPT-4 System Card - cdn.openai.com OpenAI · 13 May 2025

   “As noted above in 2.2, despite GPT-4’s capabilities, it maintains a tendency to make up facts, to double-down on incorrect information, and to perform tasks incorrectly.”

2. GPT-4 System Card - cdn.openai.com OpenAI · 13 May 2025

   “OpenAI has implemented various safety measures and processes throughout the GPT-4 development and deployment process that have reduced its ability to generate harmful content. However, GPT-4 can still be vulnerable to adversarial attacks and exploits or, “jailbreaks,” and harmful content is not the source of risk.”

3. Hallucination Rates and Reference Accuracy of ChatGPT and Bard for Systematic Reviews: Comparative Analysis Journal of Medical Internet Research · 22 May 2024

   “The hallucination rates were, respectively, 39.6% (55/139), 28.6% (34/119), and 91.4% (95/104) for GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and Bard (*P*<.001).”

4. GPT-4’s successes, and GPT-4’s failures Gary Marcus (Substack) · 15 March 2023 Own record

   “And when GPT-4 is integrated in Bing (which incorporates current search results), hallucination remains rampant, e.g., in this example from last week when Bing apparently was already quietly using GPT-4 in the background.”

Reasoning

OpenAI's GPT-4 System Card says GPT-4 keeps a tendency to make up facts, double down on incorrect information and perform tasks incorrectly (E1). It also says GPT-4 can still be jailbroken (E2), which the criteria count toward the claim. However, the same card says safety measures reduced GPT-4's ability to generate harmful content (E2). A JMIR study found a 28.6% hallucination rate for GPT-4, still high but lower than GPT-3.5's 39.6% (E3). So the errors and control problems persisted and are well documented, though one study measured a lower hallucination rate for GPT-4 than for GPT-3.5 [E3] and OpenAI reports reduced ability to generate harmful content [E2], which makes 'still, like its predecessors' somewhat overstated.

Cite this claim

Gary Marcus, “GPT-4 will still be reckless and hard to control, making a significant number of stupid errors.” (said 25 December 2022). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_151a009cf527, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_151a009cf527