“DeepMind’s newest star, just unveiled, Gato, is capable of cross-modal feats never seen before in AI, but still, when you look in the fine print, remains stuck in the same land of unreliability, moments of brilliance coupled with absolute discomprehension:”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
DeepMind's Gato achieves novel cross-modal feats but remains unreliable, mixing brilliance with total discomprehension.
Assessment: Supported Evidence as of
Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it
Marcus on AI, The New Science of Alt Intelligence, paragraph 32.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment marcus-the-new-science-of-alt-intelligence-ca7f59-a1
We recorded 20 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 2022-05-14. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- 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)
From the speaker
- Gato
- just unveiled
- cross-modal feats never seen before in AI
- unreliability
- moments of brilliance coupled with absolute discomprehension
Our interpretation
- Novelty concerns Gato's combined range of language, vision, game-playing and real robot behavior in one model with shared weights, rather than the first existence of multimodal AI.
- Brilliance and discomprehension describe strong performances alongside basic observable failures, rather than measurable mental states.
- Just unveiled identifies the launch version and its May 12–14, 2022 public record.
Counts as supported if: The launch record documents a distinctive combination of modalities and tasks, substantial successful performance, and recurrent basic failures.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable earlier systems already demonstrate the same combined coverage, or launch evaluations rebut the alleged failures and establish reliable performance across the relevant tasks.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Supported
The dated evidence matches what the claim committed to, under the criteria frozen before grading.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
Gato's launch paper documents the combination Marcus describes: broad abilities in one model, substantial successes and frequent superficial or factually incorrect replies. Support depends on reading novelty as the combined coverage. Earlier multimodal systems already existed. The evidence supports observable unreliability, not a literal claim about an absence of understanding.
Limitations
- Novelty is scoped to the combination of capabilities.
- The results are developer-reported.
- The qualitative dialogue evidence supplies no overall error rate or measure of comprehension.
Evidence (2 items)
Supports the claim: arXiv; DeepMind,
factually incorrect
Why it matters here: The launch paper reports one model spanning dialogue, captions, games and real robot control, including human-level or better performance on 23 Atari games, while acknowledging frequent poor dialogue responses. Its prior-work comparison supports novelty in that combined coverage, rather than novelty of multimodality itself.
- Publisher
- arXiv; DeepMind
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: arXiv; Kaiser and colleagues,
spanning multiple domains
Why it matters here: This earlier model combined speech, image and language tasks. It limits any suggestion that Gato invented multimodal models, but does not establish the same combined coverage of games and real robot control.
- Publisher
- arXiv; Kaiser and colleagues
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Describes events of
- Public from
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Marcus on AI, The New Science of Alt Intelligence
DeepMind’s newest star, just unveiled, Gato, is capable of cross-modal feats never seen before in AI, but still, when you look in the fine print, remains stuck in the same land of unreliability, moments of brilliance coupled with absolute discomprehension:
- Where
- paragraph 32
- Published
- 2022-05-14
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment marcus-the-new-science-of-alt-intelligence-ca7f59-a1: Current. Outcome: Supported. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment marcus-the-new-science-of-alt-intelligence-ca7f59-a1.