Pundit ClaimsAI claims by Gary Marcus and Ed Zitron, with the evidence

Gary Marcus Marcus on AI Published

Hot take on an AI catfight

We recorded 6 claims from this post. 1 was checked against evidence. 5 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.

Claims from this post (6)

In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.

  1. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “Elon thinks Sam is playing the same move that they once played together. He could be right.”

    What we tested: Musk could be right that Altman is overstating the Stargate funding, the same way OpenAI's original $1B funding claim was overstated.

  2. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “Like a lot of what Sam says, this is based on the conjecture, or in this case multiple conjectures:”

    What we tested: Altman's claim that Stargate will be great for the country rests on several conjectures, as much of what he says does.

  3. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “The entirely speculative conjecture that LLMs or something else OpenAI figures out how to be build will be enormously profitable.”

    What we tested: The idea that LLMs or other OpenAI technology will be enormously profitable is entirely speculative.

  4. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “The entirely speculative conjecture that any profits will actually do much to help the American people, as opposed to just enriching those who own that infrastructure.”

    What we tested: The idea that any AI infrastructure profits will much help the American people, rather than just enrich the owners, is entirely speculative.

  5. Assessment: SupportedSaid

    “On LLMs China is already catching up.”

    What we tested: China is already catching up with the U.S. on LLMs.

    What happened: The preceding sentence gives end-2023 U.S.–China gaps of 17.5, 13.5, 24.3 and 31.6 percentage points on MMLU, MMMU, MATH and HumanEval. All four narrowed by end-2024, including the language, mathematics and coding measures directly relevant to this claim. (Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, )

  6. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “The equally speculative conjecture that the U.S. will long term have an advantage over China if the U.S. builds the hypothesized infrastructure, as if China isn’t trying to build the same.”

    What we tested: The idea that building the infrastructure will give the U.S. a long-term AI advantage over China is speculative, since China is trying to build the same.

Held from this post (2)

These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.

  • The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Industry-wide AI infrastructure spending (perhaps $250B) has so far vastly outweighed total revenue, perhaps by 50:1.
  • The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: AI data center infrastructure carries an immense environmental cost.