“They do not deliver remotely what was initially promised of them.”
Our reading:
LLMs do not come close to delivering what was initially promised.
Assessment: Can’t be checked
What happened
Not graded on evidence
Outcome: Can’t be checked
An opinion, a recommendation, or too vague to test. Listed, not scored.
Evidence up to . Checked .
Why
Marcus clearly alleges a large shortfall against initial promises. But the passage does not identify those promises or give a sufficiently definite ordinary standard for judging their overall fulfillment. Individual promises can be checked; selecting and weighting them would determine the verdict on this broader sentence. Neither documented failures nor successful applications alone settle it. The claim therefore cannot fairly receive a factual grade as written.
Caveats
- This does not establish that Marcus's criticism is wrong.
- The contextual announcement is not treated as representative of all initial LLM promises.
- No verdict is inferred from capabilities developed after the post.
Evidence (1 item)
Claims like this aren’t scored, so there is no evidence to show.
How we judged it
- Kind of claim
- Observation
- Deadline
- None given. We don’t add one.
Where we had to interpret
- The sentence describes a substantial gap between initial promises and LLM capabilities at the time of the December 6, 2024 post.
- Marcus does not identify the promises, who made them, what counts as initial, or how to assess delivery across different capabilities.
- The surrounding acknowledgment of writing and coding uses rules out treating this as a claim that LLMs deliver nothing useful.
- Selecting a representative set of promises and deciding their relative importance would supply substantive criteria that Marcus did not give. No such selection is imposed.
We don’t grade claims like this. We only check the quote and who said it.
What would settle it
A clarification identifying the promises meant and the intended standard for substantial fulfillment would permit a narrower comparison with capabilities at the post date.
We found 15 claims in this post. See them all.
Full record
Source and dates
Marcus on AI, Hard-forked! Casey Newton’s distorted portrait of Gary Marcus and AI skepticism, paragraph 25.
- Said
- We read the source
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence up to
- Checked
We read this wording on 2026-10-28. The post may have been edited after 2024-12-06.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the posts we read.
: Marcus on AI, Hard-forked! Casey Newton’s distorted portrait of Gary Marcus and AI skepticism
They do not deliver remotely what was initially promised of them.
- Where
- paragraph 25
- Published
- 2024-12-06
- We read it
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Versions
- Current: Can’t be checked. Evidence up to 2026-10-28.
What happened to this record
PublishedBy us
Published after both AI reviews and the final check passed.
Held backBy us
A reviewer said our test wasn’t fair to what was actually said.