ClaimsPeople

Gary Marcus

Gary Marcus is an author and AI entrepreneur and professor emeritus at NYU; he has written six books, including Rebooting AI and Taming Silicon Valley, founded Geometric Intelligence (bought by Uber), testified at the May 2023 US Senate AI hearing, and writes a newsletter with over 121,000 subscribers.

712 claims collected, 213 researched, 103 resolved. Report of 4 November 2026, method 0.1.0+c876030c.

Scores by kind of claim

Each kind of claim is scored on its own, out of 100: the share that held up, with the range it likely falls in. Fewer resolved claims give a wider range.

  • Factual claims

    Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

    79 72 85

    High confidence, 64 factual claims resolved. From 18 documents, 2019 to 2026; 19 documents sampled from 37 candidates found.

    Not scored: 32 unresolvable, 4 checkable only against their own records.

    See the factual claims

  • Predictions

    Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

    80 72 88

    Medium confidence, 38 predictions resolved. From 7 documents, 2019 to 2025; 19 documents sampled from 37 candidates found.

    Not scored: 60 unresolvable. 13 more fall due later.

    Does not yet allow for how likely each prediction was when made.

    See the predictions

  • Promises

    Commitments to the person's or organisation's own future action, with something to deliver: was it delivered?

    Insufficient record: 1 promise resolved, 5 needed for a score.

    Not scored: 1 unresolvable.

    See the promises

All types combined: 79 (likely 74 to 84, high confidence), from 102 claims: 64 factual claims, 38 predictions. It mixes kinds of claim in different proportions for different people, so compare people kind by kind.

Gary Marcus's claims

213 claims · page 2 of 3

213 claims, sorted by newest said. Choose a claim to read it in full.
VerdictKindSaidClaimTopic
Unresolvable Prediction Apr 2024 LLMs' place may be smaller, and LLMs on their own may never live up to the 2023 expectations. Prediction · Apr 2024 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual Apr 2024 Gary Marcus says that in April, when he first saw what he called direct empirical evidence that "this moment had come", he wrote a passage that he says he still stands by. Factual · Apr 2024 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 If OpenAI releases a truly mindblowing GPT-5 in 2024, the generative AI bubble will not burst soon. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Mostly true Prediction 31 Mar 2024 Marcus doubted that a mindblowing GPT model would be released in 2024. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 31 Mar 2024 In early August 2023 Gary Marcus wrote a piece titled 'What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud', which was picked up by the Financial Times and other outlets. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Factual 31 Mar 2024 Current-sized LLMs are expensive and not reliable enough for many jobs. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 If OpenAI releases a truly mindblowing GPT-5 in 2024, hype around generative AI will increase further. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Factual 31 Mar 2024 LLMs themselves cannot look things up and reason over what they find. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 Marcus said he would be truly astonished if hallucinations in large language models were brought down to human expert levels by the end of 2024. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 If OpenAI releases a truly mindblowing GPT-5 in 2024, generative AI will live for another day, perhaps imploding only later when people realize there is no killer app to justify the increasingly high costs. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Mostly true Factual 31 Mar 2024 Hallucinations are inherent to how LLMs make predictions. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 If no company releases a true quantum leap addressing reliability, hallucination, data leakage and security by the end of 2024, the generative AI bubble may start to pop by around March 2025. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Mostly true Factual 31 Mar 2024 Marcus cited a statistic from a Wall Street Journal piece, "$50B in, $3B out", and said it was obviously not sustainable. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Factual 31 Mar 2024 All the big AI players are converging on systems roughly equivalent to GPT-4, all flawed in essentially the same ways. Factual · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Mostly true Prediction 31 Mar 2024 GPT-5 is likely to be even more expensive to train and operate than GPT-4. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Unresolvable Prediction 31 Mar 2024 Generative AI will still exist and find some use, but valuations and excitement may dissipate, returning only once genuine advances are made. Prediction · 31 Mar 2024 Economics and markets
Resolved true Factual Feb 2024 After Sora's February 2024 announcement, Marcus predicted its physics troubles would persist, and they have. Factual · Feb 2024 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Factual 26 Oct 2023 Some people, such as Marc Andreessen, are denying that there is any AI risk, long term or short term, and trying to turn whether to pursue AI safety into a debate. Factual · 26 Oct 2023 AI policy and governance
Mixed Prediction 26 Oct 2023 With more than 60 elections around the world in 2024, the chance that at least one would be swayed by deepfakes is high. Prediction · 26 Oct 2023 Other global risks
Resolved true Factual 26 Oct 2023 Bengio et al.'s proposal states that research breakthroughs are needed to solve some of today's technical challenges in creating AI with safe and ethical objectives. Factual · 26 Oct 2023 AI safety and alignment
Mostly true Factual 26 Oct 2023 A newly published technique shows that current LLMs can be jailbroken quickly and automatically. Factual · 26 Oct 2023 AI safety and alignment
Resolved true Factual 26 Oct 2023 There is currently no way to guarantee that large language models won't be jailbroken into saying unethical things. Factual · 26 Oct 2023 AI safety and alignment
Mostly true Factual 26 Oct 2023 Gary Marcus emphasized a CERN for AI and global AI governance in April 2023 in his TED talk and in The Economist. Factual · 26 Oct 2023 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Factual 30 Mar 2023 Gary Marcus wrote a long Twitter thread on the morning of 2023-03-30 responding to criticism of the FLI letter. Factual · 30 Mar 2023 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Factual 30 Mar 2023 The FLI open letter called for more AI research. Factual · 30 Mar 2023 Their own work or organisation
Delivered on time Promise 30 Mar 2023 Gary Marcus will speak at TED about short-term and long-term AI risk and what to do about it, in about two weeks from 2023-03-30. Promise · 30 Mar 2023 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Factual 30 Mar 2023 The FLI open letter did not call for a ban on AI or for a permanent ban. Factual · 30 Mar 2023 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Factual 30 Mar 2023 As of March 2023, none of the top AI labs is remotely transparent, AI governance basically doesn't exist, and there are basically no safeguards in place. Factual · 30 Mar 2023 AI policy and governance
Unresolvable Factual 30 Mar 2023 Gary Marcus signed the Future of Life Institute open letter and promoted it publicly. Factual · 30 Mar 2023 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Factual 24 Mar 2023 There have already been reports of contamination in GPT-4's training data. Factual · 24 Mar 2023 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 24 Mar 2023 The OpenAI and Microsoft GPT-4 papers reveal nothing about the model's architecture or training set. Factual · 24 Mar 2023 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 24 Mar 2023 Citing Ernie Davis, Marcus said OpenAI had begun to incorporate user experiments into its models' training corpus. Factual · 24 Mar 2023 AI capabilities
Resolved true Factual 24 Mar 2023 GPT-4 has not solved hallucinations, reliability or planning on complex tasks, as the paper's authors acknowledge for planning. Factual · 24 Mar 2023 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 24 Mar 2023 Gary Marcus said that on 2023-03-23 Microsoft had put out what he called a press release masquerading as science, which claimed that GPT-4 was an early (yet still incomplete) version of an AGI system. Factual · 24 Mar 2023 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will still be reckless and hard to control, making a significant number of stupid errors. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4's natural language output still won't be reliably usable as input to downstream programs such as databases or virtual assistants. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 25 Dec 2022 ChatGPT regularly makes things up, and a fair bit of what it says is untrue. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Dec 2022 Trustworthy AI will need genuinely new architectures incorporating explicit knowledge and world models at their core. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Factual 25 Dec 2022 ChatGPT is frequently retuned based on feedback, but weeks later Marcus still keeps being sent tweets showing its blunders. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Dec 2022 When GPT-4 comes out it will totally eclipse ChatGPT, and it is a safe bet that even more people will be talking about it. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Resolved true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will definitely seem smarter than its predecessors, but its internal architecture will remain problematic. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will not be trustworthy and complete enough to give reliable medical advice. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 25 Dec 2022 ChatGPT might sound like the Star Trek computer, but for now it still cannot be trusted. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Dec 2022 Marcus fully expected GPT-4 to be the shiniest model so far, but said that this does not mean it is a critical step on the optimal path to AI that can be trusted. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will be a very large, powerful system (a 'monster'). Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 With GPT-4, fluent hallucinations will still be common and easily induced, escalating the risk of LLMs being used to create misinformation. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 may be better at faking term papers, but if it follows the same playbook as its predecessors, it still won't really understand the world, and its flaws will eventually show. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 25 Dec 2022 Within a decade, maybe much less, AI's focus will shift from pure scaling of large language models to integrating them with other techniques. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Factual 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 is architecturally essentially the same as GPT-3, according to rumors. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 by itself won't be a general-purpose AGI; without external aids it won't beat Cicero in Diplomacy, drive a car reliably, or reliably guide a robot like Optimus. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will blow people's minds when released. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Own records only Factual 25 Dec 2022 Marcus knows several people who have tried GPT-4, and all were impressed. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 Marcus suspected that GPT-4's release would follow a pattern of immense buzz, then scientific scrutiny, then recognition that many problems remain. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 If GPT-4 is architecturally essentially the same as GPT-3, it can be expected to be unable to construct internal models of how the world works and, in consequence, unable to understand things at an abstract level. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 AI alignment between human wants and machine behavior will remain a critical unsolved problem, with GPT-4 unable to reliably follow shared human values. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI safety and alignment
Mostly true Factual 25 Dec 2022 ChatGPT can write about anything but is easily confused. Factual · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4's reasoning about the physical, psychological and mathematical world will still be unreliable. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Prediction 25 Dec 2022 GPT-4 will remain a pastiche generator and useful for brainstorming and first drafts, but not trustworthy general intelligence. Prediction · 25 Dec 2022 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual Dec 2022 AI-generated misinformation became increasingly widespread, as Marcus warned in December 2022, but its effects have so far been less than he feared. Factual · Dec 2022 AI safety and alignment
Mostly true Factual Mar 2022 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. Factual · Mar 2022 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Factual Mar 2022 In March 2022 Gary Marcus published an article arguing that deep learning is hitting a wall. Factual · Mar 2022 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Prediction 29 Dec 2021 Current AI, being an approximation to intelligence rather than the real thing, will never really be trustworthy. Prediction · 29 Dec 2021 AI safety and alignment
Unresolvable Factual 20 Dec 2021 Gary Marcus wrote the 2001 book The Algebraic Mind, and its predictions have so far held true. Factual · 20 Dec 2021 Their own work or organisation
Resolved false Prediction 14 Dec 2021 Gary Marcus bet that hybrid (neurosymbolic) AI models would pull ahead in 2022. Prediction · 14 Dec 2021 AI timelines and forecasting
Resolved true Factual 16 Nov 2021 In open-ended tasks such as driving, humans outperform AI systems. Factual · 16 Nov 2021 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 15 Nov 2021 Deep neural nets, nearly 10 years after their celebrated rebirth, are still utterly fooled by images like the one shown. Factual · 15 Nov 2021 AI capabilities
Resolved true Factual 1 Nov 2021 Aaron Beck, developer of cognitive therapy, has died. Factual · 1 Nov 2021 Other
Unresolvable Promise 17 Oct 2021 Gary Marcus will give a talk at the AGI21 conference on 2021-10-18. Promise · 17 Oct 2021 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Factual 12 May 2021 Biological brains have a high degree of precise internal structure that artificial neural networks lack. Factual · 12 May 2021 AI capabilities
Mostly true Factual 8 May 2021 Covid-19 is transmitted through the air (airborne). Factual · 8 May 2021 Biosecurity
Resolved true Factual 17 Apr 2021 Garry Kasparov beat Gary Marcus at a chess exhibition. Factual · 17 Apr 2021 Other
Unresolvable Factual 13 Apr 2021 As of 2021, neural networks still struggle with notions that are obvious to babies. Factual · 13 Apr 2021 AI capabilities
Resolved true Factual 13 Apr 2021 Gary Marcus published a 1999 Science article on infant rule learning. Factual · 13 Apr 2021 Science and research methods
Own records only Factual 28 Oct 2020 Marcus spent three months recruiting Rodney Brooks to join his robotics company idea. Factual · 28 Oct 2020 Their own work or organisation
Mostly true Factual 28 Oct 2020 As of 2020 there is no off-the-shelf software platform for building a domestic robot comparable to a game engine for building video games. Factual · 28 Oct 2020 Technology
Unresolvable Factual 4 Jun 2020 Anima Anandkumar misrepresented private correspondence with Gary Marcus. Factual · 4 Jun 2020 Their own work or organisation
Unresolvable Factual 4 Jun 2020 Gary Marcus said that Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Elon Musk lead a "hall of shame" list of billionaires who have made no known charitable contributions to helping the world cope with Covid. Factual · 4 Jun 2020 Other
Unresolvable Factual 2 Jun 2020 Robust.AI is closed on 2 June 2020 in solidarity with those seeking justice and in memory of George Floyd. Factual · 2 Jun 2020 Other
Resolved true Factual 12 May 2020 When the environment changes, as during the pandemic, many AI models start to break. Factual · 12 May 2020 AI capabilities
Mostly false Factual 4 May 2020 Published numbers for flu deaths are likely overestimates. Factual · 4 May 2020 Biosecurity
Resolved true Factual 30 Apr 2020 A piece on common sense in AI by John Pavlus includes some chortling and skepticism from Gary Marcus. Factual · 30 Apr 2020 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 14 Nov 2019 Artificial general intelligence will probably not be achieved within five to 10 years of 2019. Prediction · 14 Nov 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Factual 14 Nov 2019 Asked whether "they" understand the "no free lunch" point, Marcus said "about 75 percent" and "They do not yet"; the quote does not say who "they" are or what the 75 percent measures. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 Field building and careers
Not yet due Prediction 14 Nov 2019 Gary Marcus guessed that artificial general intelligence would arrive somewhere between 20 and 100 years from 2019, maybe closer to 50, and said this was a wide confidence interval. Prediction · 14 Nov 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Prediction 14 Nov 2019 Marcus argues that AI will not proceed until the field allows some "neatness", meaning some innate structure (nativism), in its systems. Prediction · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Factual 14 Nov 2019 Gary Marcus wrote a book called The Birth of the Mind about how a small number of genes builds a complex brain. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 Their own work or organisation
Resolved true Factual 14 Nov 2019 Cyc is not an end-to-end system. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Factual 14 Nov 2019 Most of the current best AI systems fundamentally just learn contingencies rather than general abstract concepts that humans can apply quickly. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Factual 14 Nov 2019 The best-selling domestic robot of all time is still the Roomba, which does not manipulate objects. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 Technology
Mixed Factual 14 Nov 2019 AI currently lacks a way of building reusable skills. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 14 Nov 2019 The real action in AI will be in finding theoretically sound ways of combining symbolic and deep learning traditions. Prediction · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Resolved true Factual 14 Nov 2019 AlphaGo is a hybrid system that uses deep learning for pattern recognition and Monte Carlo tree search, a symbolic operation, to search possibilities. Factual · 14 Nov 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 20 Sep 2019 Marcus said he thinks it is just a question of whether "we will get there" gradually or through a lot of social unrest. Prediction · 20 Sep 2019 AI, the economy and work
Resolved true Factual 20 Sep 2019 Driverless cars that are not actually reliable can be easily fooled. Factual · 20 Sep 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Factual 20 Sep 2019 If the paddle in the game Breakout is moved by three pixels, a deep-learning system trained on the game fails. Factual · 20 Sep 2019 AI capabilities
Not yet due Prediction 20 Sep 2019 Machines will achieve world-class scientific reasoning within the next 500 years (by 2519). Prediction · 20 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Unresolvable Prediction 20 Sep 2019 Smarter AI could solve many medical and scientific problems. Prediction · 20 Sep 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 20 Sep 2019 The ultimate AI systems will have the memory capabilities of machines rather than of people. Prediction · 20 Sep 2019 AI capabilities
Unresolvable Prediction 20 Sep 2019 Marcus said he expects machines will eventually be able to do world-class scientific reasoning, though they are nowhere near that now. Prediction · 20 Sep 2019 AI timelines and forecasting
Mostly true Factual 20 Sep 2019 Biological cognition involves many different mechanisms, working on different principles, that reinforce and counter-balance each other. Factual · 20 Sep 2019 Science and research methods
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Gary Marcus

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Prediction AI timelines and forecasting

“I expect that machines will eventually be able to do world-class scientific reasoning, but we are nowhere near that right now,”

Gary Marcus, interviewee 20 September 2019 Gary Marcus on Why AI Needs a Reboot (Psychology Today)

Marcus said he expects machines will eventually be able to do world-class scientific reasoning, though they are nowhere near that now.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Reasoning

'Eventually' has no horizon, so the claim can't be settled.

Cite this claim

Gary Marcus, “Marcus said he expects machines will eventually be able to do world-class scientific reasoning, though they are nowhere near that now.” (said 20 September 2019). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_7aeeafcb77e4, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_7aeeafcb77e4

Claims without a verdict

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