Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment First said 2023-09-22

“If, after training on virtually the entire internet, you know Tom is Mary Lee‘s son, but can’t figure out without special prompting that Mary Lee therefore is Tom’s mother, you have no business running all the world’s software.”

Elegant and powerful new result that seriously undermines large language models, paragraph 24. The full statement is at the source.

Our reading, the sentence that was checked:

A system that, after training on virtually the entire internet, knows Tom is Mary Lee's son but can't figure out without special prompting that Mary Lee is therefore Tom's mother has no business running all the world's software.

Assessment: Can’t be checked Not checked against evidence

Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it

Marcus on AI, Elegant and powerful new result that seriously undermines large language models, paragraph 24.

Said: 2023-09-22
Source observed: 2026-10-29live page, full text, public
Evidence: Not checkedboth screens found it cannot be checked
Assessment recorded: 2026-10-29assessment marcus-elegant-and-powerful-new-result-that-09575d-a1

We recorded 8 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.

The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-29. The source may have been edited after 2023-09-22. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.

What the claim commits to

Kind: Recommendation or value judgment
Deadline, as the speaker wrote it: None stated. This site does not add one.
Deadline state when assessed: No horizon
Deadline state on 2026-10-29: No horizon (the release’s reference date)

Conditions

after training on virtually the entire internet (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
knows the forward relation (Tom is Mary Lee's son) (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
can't figure out the reverse without special prompting (qualifier, stated by the speaker)

From the speaker

after training on virtually the entire internet
knows the forward relation (Tom is Mary Lee's son)
can't figure out the reverse without special prompting

Our interpretation

None added.

This claim is not graded on evidence. The record checks that the words are quoted correctly and attributed to the right person, and that the claim is classified correctly.

Current assessment

Not graded on evidence

Outcome: Can’t be checked

Both AI providers screened this claim on their own and found that public evidence could not settle it. It is recorded and attributed, not scored.

Why it can’t be checked

Both screens gave the same reason:

A recommendation or a value judgment.

Evidence: Not checked
Deadline state when assessed: No horizon
Assessment recorded: 2026-10-29
Policy version: 2026-10-28.7

Rationale

Not checked against evidence. Two independent screens, one from each provider, both found this a recommendation or a value judgment.

Limitations

None recorded.

Evidence (0 items)

No evidence was searched for. Both screens found that public evidence could not settle this claim.

This claim was not checked against evidence. claude-opus-5-5 (Anthropic) extracted it from the post and wrote the sentence at the top, our reading of the claim. claude-opus-5-5 (Anthropic) and gpt-6-astra (OpenAI) then screened it independently, without seeing each other’s answers. Both confirmed that the sentence says what the author said, and both found that public evidence could not settle the claim. No model wrote the assessment: code composed its text from the two screens, so there was no separate check of the final text. Code, not a model, decided whether it could be published.

Agreement between models is a check on the record, not proof that the assessment is right. Anthropic and OpenAI make these models, and some claims on this site are about those companies. How the method works.

Where it was said (1)

Said once in the sources this register covers.

2023-09-22: Marcus on AI, Elegant and powerful new result that seriously undermines large language models
If, after training on virtually the entire internet, you know Tom is Mary Lee‘s son, but can’t figure out without special prompting that Mary Lee therefore is Tom’s mother, you have no business running all the world’s software.
Where
paragraph 24
Published
2023-09-22
Source observed
2026-10-29, live page
Access
full text, public

History

Assessment versions

Assessment marcus-elegant-and-powerful-new-result-that-09575d-a1: Current. Outcome: Can’t be checked. Not checked against evidence. Public date not recorded.

Recorded events

2026-10-29
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment marcus-elegant-and-powerful-new-result-that-09575d-a1.