Gary Marcus
Cognitive scientist and long-standing critic of deep learning's claims; writes Marcus on AI and wrote Rebooting AI.
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What they believe
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Almost every major figure in AI has now arrived at the critique of large language models he began making in 2019.
But one by one, almost every major thinker in AI has come around to the critique of LLMs that I began presenting in 2019.
garymarcus.substack.comSaid 26 Sept 2025This on korrents
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GPT-5 was an ordinary incremental advance, and the gap between what was promised for it and what shipped is the story of the field.
People had grown to expect miracles, but GPT-5 is just the latest incremental advance.
garymarcus.substack.comSaid 9 Aug 2025This on korrents
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Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 10 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
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Almost every major figure in AI has now arrived at the critique of large language models he began making in 2019.
But one by one, almost every major thinker in AI has come around to the critique of LLMs that I began presenting in 2019.
Game over for pure LLMs. Even Turing Award Winner Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus. Said 26 Sept 2025
GPT-5 was an ordinary incremental advance, and the gap between what was promised for it and what shipped is the story of the field.
People had grown to expect miracles, but GPT-5 is just the latest incremental advance.
GPT-5: Overdue, overhyped and underwhelming. And that’s not the worst of it. Said 9 Aug 2025
The LLM line of research will reach a capability plateau.
But this particular approach has limits that are clearer by the day.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
Show 7 more
Anyone who thinks large language models are a direct route to transformative AGI is kidding themselves.
But anybody who thinks LLMs are a direct route to the sort AGI that could fundamentally transform society for the good is kidding themselves.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
There is no route to AI alignment or safety that goes around reliability: a system that cannot reliably follow a known algorithm cannot be made safe.
And good luck getting to “alignment” or “safety” without reliabilty.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
A language model is no substitute for a well-specified conventional algorithm, so it cannot simply be dropped into a complex problem and trusted.
What the Apple paper shows, most fundamentally, regardless of how you define AGI, is that LLMs are no substitute for good well-specified conventional algorithms.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
Success on the easy version of a task is evidence of nothing, because it seduces you into believing the model found a general solution when it did not.
Worse, as the latest Apple papers shows, LLMs may well work on your easy test set (like Hanoi with 4 discs) and seduce you into thinking it has built a proper, generalizable solution when it does not.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
AGI worth the name would combine human adaptiveness with machine reliability, not reproduce human performance including human failures.
The vision of AGI I have always had is one that combines the strengths of humans with the strength of machines, overcoming the weaknesses of humans.
A knockout blow for LLMs? Said 7 Jun 2025
Scaling the 2019-2023 recipe — same architecture, bigger model, more data — is not enough; further progress depends on new architectural ideas.
Neurosymbolic AI — combining such machinery with neural networks – is likely a necessary condition for going forward.
LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem Said 11 Oct 2024
Large language models do not reason formally: their performance collapses as a problem is made bigger, in the way a calculator's never does.
Another manifestation of the lack of sufficiently abstract, formal reasoning in LLMs is the way in which performance often fall apart as problems are made bigger.
LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem Said 11 Oct 2024
Beliefs others hold too
Scaling the 2019-2023 recipe — same architecture, bigger model, more data — is not enough; further progress depends on new architectural ideas. 2 hold this
Neurosymbolic AI — combining such machinery with neural networks – is likely a necessary condition for going forward.
LLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem Said 11 Oct 2024
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Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 1 thing — each backed by an exact quote.
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Recommends The Marketoonist
You can follow him - and order some of his collected work — at The Marketoonist website.
garymarcus.substack.com 30 Dec 2025
Where they publish
Newsletter Marcus on AI His newsletter on what large language models can and cannot do. Has a feed.
Recent
- Report from the Vatican 31 Oct 2026 Yesterday I had the singular honor of meeting His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV
- What Anthropic left out of their draft S-1 26 Oct 2026 Buyer, beware of omissions
- Generative AI’s make-or-break week? 26 Oct 2026 We may know a lot more, soon
Show 17 more
- Will Generative AI do more harm than good? 24 Oct 2026 Things aren’t looking great.
- All the king’s horses and all the king’s men haven’t been able to put CoreWeave back together again 22 Oct 2026 Nobody in the tech industry wants to see them collapse, but the stock has dropped over 50% in the last six months, anyway
- Breaking news: U.S. banks are taking hits from AI agents 22 Oct 2026 Who knows what piece of infrastructure might be attacked next.
- Generative AI in disarray 15 Oct 2026 Seven brief items from Delhi.
- It remains “very difficult [to find] actual, materially measurable financial impacts” from spending on AI, per new study 14 Oct 2026 Yet another study pointing in the same direction
- Could this be the Frontier Labs’ WeWork moment? 13 Oct 2026 Some ominous signs
- We must recall open-ended AI agents with internet access from the market, now 10 Oct 2026 Every minute we wait risks disaster
- Complementary remarks from Gary Marcus and Terence Tao on OpenAI’s giant math drop 7 Oct 2026 The real news here isn’t the result; it’s what we were not told.
- Coming soon: New York City’s hearing on AI risks 5 Oct 2026 New York tries to take care of its own
- Can companies like OpenAI keep getting away with what they are doing? An interview with Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout 30 Sept 2026 “The most powerful tool is the power to dissolve corporations that engage in repeat lawbreaking.”
- Hot take on a weak White House Accord on “Super Intelligence” 29 Sept 2026 What was signed, and what wasn’t said
- BREAKING: OpenAI was warned, months before the Hugging Face incident 29 Sept 2026 They raced ahead, anyway
- BREAKING: Florida seeks injunction against OpenAI 28 Sept 2026 And potentially important news from Nvidia
- BREAKING: AI agent incident toll has risen to tens of thousands 26 Sept 2026 Meanwhile, the US government appears to be paralyzed
- BREAKING: OpenAI’s security fiasco explodes — and could tank Jensen Huang’s reputation 25 Sept 2026 OpenAI’s software didn’t just attack HuggingFace.
- “I think the answer is we have to shut the labs down” - Jensen Huang 24 Sept 2026 OpenAI hacks a foreign government — and the US faces its most critical AI test yet.
- Historic UN Security Council Briefing on AI 23 Sept 2026 We all agree on what needs to be done. Now let’s do it.
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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