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What Gary Marcus thinks about LLMs

@gary-marcus · 10 positions · 0 changes of mind

Cognitive scientist, professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at NYU, and the most persistent public critic of large language models. Author of The Algebraic Mind and Rebooting AI; writes the Marcus on AI newsletter.

Gary Marcus did not write this page.

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6 dated positions, 2024 to 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Gary Marcus has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingAlmost every major figure in AI has now arrived at the critique of large language models he began making in 2019.

    Their wordsBut 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.garymarcus.substack.com

    Interesting
  2. 4 months earlier

  3. Our readingA language model is no substitute for a well-specified conventional algorithm, so it cannot simply be dropped into a complex problem and trusted.

    Their wordsWhat 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?garymarcus.substack.com 3rd of 6 in this piece

    AGIApple

    Interesting

  5. Our readingSuccess 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.

    Their wordsWorse, 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?garymarcus.substack.com 4th of 6 in this piece

    Apple

    Interesting

  7. Our readingAnyone who thinks large language models are a direct route to transformative AGI is kidding themselves.

    Their wordsBut 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?garymarcus.substack.com 5th of 6 in this piece

    AGI

    Interesting

  9. Our readingThe LLM line of research will reach a capability plateau.

    Their wordsBut this particular approach has limits that are clearer by the day.

    ↗A knockout blow for LLMs?garymarcus.substack.com 6th of 6 in this piece

    Interesting
  10. 8 months earlier

  11. Our readingLarge language models do not reason formally: their performance collapses as a problem is made bigger, in the way a calculator's never does.

    Their wordsAnother 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 problemgarymarcus.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece

    Interesting