Claims that can’t be checked, page 34 of 37
Claims by Gary Marcus and Ed Zitron. Deadlines are judged as of 2026-10-29.
Claims that can’t be checked (3643)
Public evidence cannot settle these claims, so they are recorded and attributed, not scored. Most were screened out: both AI providers read the claim on its own and found it a value judgment, rhetoric, hedged, too vague to test, or about something no public evidence could show. The rest were found to be recommendations or too open to test in a full review.
Page 34 of 37: claims 3301 to 3400 of 3643, ordered by the date first said, newest first. To find a claim by its words, use search.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Educating people to overcome the overattribution bias will be a vital step; we can’t have senators and members of the AI community making the problem worse.”
Our reading: Educating people to overcome overattribution bias is vital, and senators and AI community members should not worsen it.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We also need new technical tools, like watermarks and generated content detectors, to help distinguish human- and machine-generated content, and policy measures to limit how and where AI models can be used.”
Our reading: New tools like watermarks and detectors, plus policy measures limiting how and where AI models can be used, are needed.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Treat them as fun toys, if you like, but don’t treat them as friends.”
Our reading: People should not treat chatbots as friends.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“As tempting as it is, we have to stop treating AI models like people.”
Our reading: People must stop treating AI models like people.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We should be super worried about how large language models, which are very difficult to steer, are changing our world, but the immediate transition to a singularity is one worry we can postpone.”
Our reading: We should worry a great deal about how hard-to-steer LLMs are changing the world, but not about an immediate transition to a singularity.
No horizon
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“What’s happening now, in my view, is that people are wildly overattributing an intelligence to GPT-4 that isn’t there, and then scaling up that further into something that is some kind of total fantasy about GPT-5.”
Our reading: People are wildly overattributing intelligence to GPT-4 and extrapolating that into fantasies about GPT-5.
No horizon
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Conditional forecast
“If China wins the AI war it will be partly because of data, partly because of choices about how to allocate resources, and partly because they ultimately do a better job educating their citizens and become the first to invent something new, and not because they scale up the exciting but rickety contraption that’s currently obsessing the West.”
Our reading: If China wins the AI war, it will be partly because of data, partly because of choices about allocating resources, and partly because it ultimately does a better job educating its citizens and becomes the first to invent something new, not because it scales up the exciting but rickety contraption currently obsessing the West.
No horizon
Only if: if China wins the AI war
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We in the West should definitely be concerned about whether China is going to catch up over the next decade. But basing our AI policies around fantasies doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea.”
Our reading: The West should be concerned about China catching up over the next decade but should not base AI policy on fantasies about GPT-5.
No horizon
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Rhetoric
“I am not afraid because GPT is too smart, I am afraid because GPT is too stupid, too dumb to comprehend an op-ed, and too dumb to keep its mouth shut.”
Our reading: Marcus says he is afraid not because GPT is too smart but because it is too stupid: too dumb to comprehend an op-ed and too dumb to keep its mouth shut.
No horizon
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“A lot of those fantasies get started when people don’t really understand what’s happening with GPT-4; over and over they misattribute occasionally startling feats of text manipulation over vast corpora for real understanding.”
Our reading: A lot of the fantasies about GPT-5 get started when people don't really understand GPT-4 and repeatedly mistake its occasionally startling feats of text manipulation over vast corpora for real understanding.
No horizon
Scope: a lot of those fantasies
Source: GPT-5 and irrational exuberance
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Forecast
“The Writers Guild of America has brought up similar concerns (and made it clear they are willing to strike to protect the rights of their workers) and will likely successfully protect writers as a result.”
Our reading: The Writers Guild of America will likely succeed in protecting writers against generative AI-related job threats because of its willingness to strike.
No horizon
Qualifier: WGA willing to strike
Source: Post-Bull Depression
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“The many, many rounds of layoffs that have happened seem to be due to the fact that tech companies have all agreed it’s a great time to do so.”
Our reading: The many rounds of tech layoffs seem to be due to tech companies having all agreed that it is a great time to lay people off.
No horizon
Qualifier: seem to be
Source: Post-Bull Depression
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Observation
“Generative AI is supposed to take millions of jobs away, but I am struggling to find a cogent explanation as to how, why or when. There’s just the sense that it will happen, and that if you squint hard enough you can sort of see what somebody might be saying.”
Our reading: The author says he is struggling to find a cogent explanation of how, why or when generative AI will take millions of jobs, and that there is just a sense that it will happen.
No horizon
Qualifier: as reported by the author (struggling to find)
Source: Post-Bull Depression
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Observation
“Generative AI appears to be the only way to get funding at the moment”
Our reading: As of April 2023, generative AI appears to be the only way for startups to get venture funding.
No horizon
Qualifier: at the moment
Source: Post-Bull Depression
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Vulnerable patients shouldn’t be talking to chatbots that aren’t competent for this situation, and too much of the discussion in the media have made chatbots sound more intelligent and even more friendly than they are.”
Our reading: Vulnerable patients should not be talking to chatbots that are not competent for mental-health situations.
No horizon
Qualifier: chatbots that aren't competent for this situation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Ultimately I see the societal impact of those three as likely larger than the chatbot-administered medical and psychiatric advice, but I do remain quite concerned about the implications of not always competent medical and psychiatric advice.”
Our reading: The societal impact of LLM misinformation, cybercrime, and employment disruption will likely be larger than that of chatbot-administered medical and psychiatric advice.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“But there’s some reason to think the chatbot may have contributed, as discussed below.”
Our reading: There is some reason to think the chatbot may have contributed to the Belgian man's suicide, though causality is murky.
No horizon
Qualifier: causality cannot be fully established
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“No; it just means we probably shouldn’t use them to deliver therapy unless and until we become more confident in them.”
Our reading: We probably should not use LLMs to deliver therapy unless and until we become more confident in them.
No horizon
Qualifier: unless and until we become more confident in them
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“I am particularly concerned that wholesale, plausible misinformation may create an atmosphere of mistrust, potentially undermining democracy; I also worry that large language models might also be weaponized to trick users as parts of large-scale (perhaps unprecedentedly large scale) cybercrime operations.”
Our reading: LLMs might be weaponized to trick users in large-scale, perhaps unprecedentedly large, cybercrime operations.
No horizon
Qualifier: near-term
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Let’s use LLM’s where there can be help, and be cautious where they might cause harm.”
Our reading: LLMs should be used where they can help and with caution where they might cause harm.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“It took only a couple months for the first incident to pop up; we may see a lot more.”
Our reading: We may see many more chatbot-associated deaths/incidents.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“The experience was tragic, and underscores the fact that vulnerable people may over attribute wisdom and intelligence to machines that don’t really understand humanity.”
Our reading: Chatbots do not really understand humanity, and vulnerable people may over-attribute wisdom and intelligence to them.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Medium-term we will likely see significant disruptions of employment.”
Our reading: In the medium term, we will likely see significant disruptions of employment.
No horizon
Scope: among potential harms from chatbots/large language models
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We should address this situation, even if there are others.”
Our reading: Society should address chatbot-associated mental-health harms even though other causes exist.
No horizon
Qualifier: even if other causes of suicide exist
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Which is why either/or thinking – thinking my problems are more important than your problems – is deadly.”
Our reading: Because no single solution fixes AI's problems, treating one set of AI risks as more important to the exclusion of others is harmful.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“To be honest, I would have preferred my own proposed moratorium, co-written a month earlier, with Canadian Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner, which called for a temporary ban on widescale deployment (not research), until we could put in a regulatory infrastructure modeled on establishing the safety of medicines, with phased roll out and safety cases.”
Our reading: Widescale AI deployment (not research) should be temporarily banned until a medicine-style regulatory regime with phased rollout and safety cases is in place.
No horizon
Qualifier: until regulatory infrastructure is in place
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“The main thing that worries me is that I see self-interest on all sides, and not just the corporate players, when what we really need is coordinated action.”
Our reading: Marcus's main worry is that he sees self-interest on all sides of the AI debate, not just among corporate players, when what is really needed is coordinated action.
No horizon
Scope: on all sides, not just the corporate players
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“I’m more concerned about bad outcomes for AI now than at any other point in my life.”
Our reading: Marcus is more concerned about bad AI outcomes now (April 2023) than at any prior point in his life.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“It was definitely too hypey around the imminence of artificial general intelligence (I held my nose on that point); there is no obvious way to get ensure compliance; China might go ahead anyway; we don’t even know how to evaluate the proposed ban’s main criterion.”
Our reading: There is no obvious way to ensure compliance with the proposed moratorium, China might go ahead anyway, and we don't even know how to evaluate the ban's main criterion (halting systems more powerful than GPT-4).
No horizon
Qualifier: China might go ahead anyway (possibility only)
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Making new systems that are “more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal” should literally be at the top of everyone’s agenda.”
Our reading: Making new AI systems that are more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal should literally be at the top of everyone's agenda.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“On a 1-10 scale of least worried to most worried, I was at a 6. Now I am at an I- don’t-think-about-much-else 9.”
Our reading: Marcus's worry about AI rose from 6 out of 10 a year earlier to 9 out of 10 in April 2023.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“The sooner we stop bickering and starting getting to it, the better.”
Our reading: The AI community should stop infighting and start on trustworthy-AI research as soon as possible.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Conditional forecast
“If we want to get to AI we can trust, probably the first thing we are going to need is a coalition.”
Our reading: If we want to get to AI we can trust, probably the first thing we are going to need is a coalition.
No horizon
Only if: if we want to get to AI we can trust
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Absolutely, a Manhattan project on getting AI systems to align with human values would be a great thing.”
Our reading: A Manhattan Project-scale effort to make AI systems align with human values would be a great thing.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“But I don’t think that legitimate concerns about the hypey-ness of letter in anyway undermines the real need to rein in the systems are currently being rolled out at unprecedented scale.”
Our reading: There is a real need to rein in the AI systems currently being rolled out at unprecedented scale.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“This doesn’t mean we are doomed, but we do need to think hard, and quickly, about what proper measures look like, just as we have done for medicine, aviation, cars, and so on.”
Our reading: Although this does not mean we are doomed, we need to think hard, and quickly, about what proper measures for AI look like, as we have done for medicine, aviation, cars, and so on.
No horizon
Qualifier: this doesn't mean we are doomed
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“I don't think they are close to AGI.”
Our reading: LLMs are not close to AGI.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“As I said yesterday to The New York Times, “We have a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and a huge number of unknowns.””
Our reading: AI currently presents a perfect storm of corporate irresponsibility, widespread adoption, lack of regulation and many unknowns.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“To my mind, doing nothing is truly the most foolish option.”
Our reading: Doing nothing about AI risk is the most foolish option.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“The idea (which I have actually heard expressed) that AI should be exempt from regulation is absurd.”
Our reading: AI should not be exempt from regulation.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“But that doesn't mean that they don't have the potential to rip apart our social fabric—particularly given the current mix of unbelievably widespread and rapid deployment, corporate irresponsibility, the lack of regulation, and inherent unreliability.”
Our reading: LLMs have the potential to rip apart the social fabric, particularly given rapid widespread deployment, corporate irresponsibility, lack of regulation and their inherent unreliability.
No horizon
Qualifier: given widespread and rapid deployment
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“👉 It is *not* fine to do nothing.”
Our reading: Doing nothing about the risks of large AI systems is not acceptable; action should be taken.
No horizon
Source: The Open Letter Controversy
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“but the spirit of the letter is one that I support: until we get a better handle on the risks and benefits, we should proceed with caution.”
Our reading: AI development should proceed with caution until the risks and benefits are better understood.
No horizon
Qualifier: until we get a better handle on the risks and benefits
Source: A temporary pause on training extra large language models
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Whether AI is at number one or number 10, we need to get serious about it, now, given the sudden rapid widespread deployment and lack of clarity about use cases and means of mitigation.”
Our reading: We need to get serious about AI risk now, given rapid widespread deployment and unclear use cases and mitigations.
No horizon
Qualifier: given rapid widespread deployment and unclear mitigation
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“It’s not an either/or situation; current technology already poses enormous risks that we are ill-prepared for. With future technology, things could well get worse.”
Our reading: Current AI already poses enormous risks we are ill-prepared for, and future AI could well make things worse.
No horizon
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We need to stop worrying (just) about Skynet and robots taking over the world, and think a lot more about what criminals, including terrorists, might do with LLMs, and what, if anything, we might do to stop them.”
Our reading: We should think much more about criminal and terrorist misuse of LLMs and how to stop it, not just about Skynet scenarios.
No horizon
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“But we also need to treat LLMs as a dress rehearsal future synthetic intelligence, and ask ourselves hard questions about what on earth we are going to do with future technology, which might well be even more difficult to control.”
Our reading: We should treat LLMs as a dress rehearsal for future AI, which may be even harder to control.
No horizon
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“theirs (from what I can tell) seem to center mainly around what happens if computers rapidly and radically self-improve themselves, which I don’t see as an immediate possibility.”
Our reading: Marcus does not see computers rapidly and radically improving themselves as an immediate possibility.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This does not establish whether Marcus's technical expectation was reasonable.
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda, LLM-enhanced terrorism could in turn lead to nuclear war, or to the deliberate spread of pathogens worse than covid-19, etc. Many, many people could die; civilization could be utterly disrupted.”
Our reading: LLM-enhanced terrorism, perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda, could lead to nuclear war or to the deliberate spread of pathogens worse than covid-19, and many, many people could die and civilization could be utterly disrupted.
No horizon
Qualifier: perhaps coupled with mass AI-generated propaganda
Source: AI risk ≠ AGI risk
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“This cannot and should not stand.”
Our reading: Microsoft and OpenAI's opaque deployment of risky AI systems should not be allowed to continue.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Conditional forecast
“That claim would never survive serious scientific peer review.”
Our reading: Microsoft's claim that GPT-4 is an early (yet still incomplete) version of an AGI system would never survive serious scientific peer review.
No horizon
Only if: if the claim were subjected to serious scientific peer review
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We must demand transparency, and if we don’t get it, we must contemplate shutting these projects down.”
Our reading: The public must demand transparency from Microsoft and OpenAI, and if it is not provided, consider shutting their projects down.
No horizon
Qualifier: if transparency is not provided, contemplate shutting projects down
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“As I have said before, I don’t really think GPT-4 has much to do with AGI.”
Our reading: Marcus does not really think GPT-4 has much to do with AGI, as he has said before.
No horizon
Qualifier: I don't really think
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Observation
“Generative AI has some promise, but also has the potential to cause genuine harm.”
Our reading: Generative AI shows some promise but also has the potential to cause genuine harm.
No horizon
Source: The Uncanny Valley
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“So-called “reasoning” by free association, even constrained by a giant database, isn’t really reasoning:”
Our reading: The free-association 'reasoning' LLMs do is not really reasoning, even when constrained by a giant database.
No horizon
Qualifier: even when constrained by a giant database
Source: This Week in AI Doublespeak
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“Although GPT-4 is clearly better than GPT-3 and 3.5, it is not so far as I can tell, qualitatively better, only quantitatively better; as noted above, the limits remain more or less the same.”
Our reading: So far as Marcus can tell, GPT-4, though clearly better than GPT-3 and 3.5, is only quantitatively and not qualitatively better, and its limits remain more or less the same.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This does not reject the checkability of narrower claims about particular limitations or benchmark improvements.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“Massive scaling has not thus far lead to revolution.”
Our reading: As of March 2023, massive scaling has not led to a revolution in AI.
No horizon
Qualifier: thus far
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“The quantitative improvements may (or may not) have considerable commercial implications in particular domains, but it’s not the massive win for the scaling hypotheses that memes like this had forecast.”
Our reading: GPT-4's quantitative improvements may or may not have considerable commercial implications in particular domains, but GPT-4 is not the massive win for the scaling hypotheses that memes like the one he cites had forecast.
No horizon
Qualifier: may (or may not)
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Rhetoric
“One more giant step for hype, but not necessarily a giant step for science, AGI, or humanity.”
Our reading: GPT-4 is a big step for hype but not necessarily for science, AGI, or humanity.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“and (b) it puts all of us in an extremely poor position to predict what GPT-4 consequences will be for society, if we have no idea of what is in the training set and no way of anticipating which problems it will work on and which it will not.”
Our reading: If we have no idea what is in GPT-4's training set and no way of anticipating which problems it will work on and which it will not, all of us are in an extremely poor position to predict what GPT-4's consequences will be for society.
No horizon
Only if: if we have no idea of what is in the training set
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“It is a step backwards for science, because it sets a new precedent for pretending to be scientific while revealing absolutely nothing.”
Our reading: GPT-4's release is a step backwards for science because it sets a new precedent for pretending to be scientific while revealing absolutely nothing.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“I have caused for something less: stricter regulations governing deployment.”
Our reading: AI deployment should be governed by stricter regulations, rather than a full pause on AI.
No horizon
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“Of course I view ChatGPT as only dimly related to artificial general intelligence, but I do see it as dress rehearsal.”
Our reading: ChatGPT is only dimly related to artificial general intelligence, but it serves as a dress rehearsal for it.
No horizon
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Conditional forecast
“If we don’t start fighting now, democracy may well be overwhelmed by misinformation and consequent polarization—and perhaps quite soon.”
Our reading: If we don't start fighting misinformation now, democracy may well be overwhelmed by misinformation and consequent polarization, perhaps quite soon.
No horizon
Only if: if we don't start fighting now
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Rhetoric
“The genie is already partway out of the bottle.”
Our reading: LLM technology has already partly escaped containment.
No horizon
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“The 2024 elections could be unlike anything we have seen before.”
Our reading: Because of AI-generated misinformation, the 2024 elections could be unlike any elections seen before.
No horizon
Qualifier: in the context of AI-generated misinformation
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Either way I think we need to raise these questions seriously, sooner rather than later.”
Our reading: Society should seriously raise questions about pausing or regulating AI, sooner rather than later.
No horizon
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“We can’t just act as if nothing is happening here. And we can’t act like we have infinite time to decide what to do, either.”
Our reading: Society must not ignore AI risks or assume it has unlimited time to decide how to respond.
No horizon
Source: Should we worry more about short-term AI risk or long-term AI risk?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“But there is no real argument against Chomsky’s overall take: these systems are useful technology but remain a long way from true artificial intelligence, and they are even further from telling us anything useful about the function of the human mind.”
Our reading: LLMs are useful technology but remain a long way from true artificial intelligence and even further from telling us anything useful about the human mind.
No horizon
Source: Caricaturing Noam Chomsky
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“As I said in the most recent one (not yet aired), at the beginning of my remarks, the only intellectually honest answer is to say we don’t yet know. We don’t know how high the highs are going to be, and we don’t yet know how low the lows are going to be.”
Our reading: It is not yet known whether LLMs will be net positive or net negative.
No horizon
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“And what really scares me is that I don’t think we yet know the half of what that entails.”
Our reading: Marcus does not think we yet know half of what the harms that large language models are almost certain to cause will entail.
No horizon
Qualifier: I don't think
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“And many of these attacks might of course be combined with advances in voice-cloning tech, which itself is already being applied to scamming, as discussed by the Washington Post on Sunday.”
Our reading: Many of the chatbot-enabled attacks he described might be combined with advances in voice-cloning technology, which is already being used for scams.
No horizon
Scope: many of these attacks
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“But they are almost certain to cause harm as well, and we need to prepare for that, too.”
Our reading: Society needs to prepare for harms caused by large language models.
No horizon
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“State actors and extremist groups are likely to use large language models to deliberately mass produce authoritative-sounding misinformation with fake references and data at unprecedented scale, attempting to sway elections and public opinion.”
Our reading: State actors and extremist groups are likely to use large language models to deliberately mass-produce authoritative-sounding misinformation with fake references and data at unprecedented scale, in an attempt to sway elections and public opinion.
No horizon
Qualifier: deliberately
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Content farms that are indifferent to the health of their customers may generate interesting-sounding medical content, indifferent as to whether it is true, in order to sell advertising clicks.”
Our reading: Content farms that are indifferent to the health of their customers may generate interesting-sounding medical content, without caring whether it is true, in order to sell advertising clicks.
No horizon
Scope: content farms that are indifferent to the health of their customers
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“But one thing is clear: anybody who thinks we have come to grips with the unknown unknowns here is mistaken.”
Our reading: We have not come to grips with the unknown unknown risks of LLMs.
No horizon
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Chat-style search’s tendency to hallucinate is likely to accidentally produce medical misinformation.”
Our reading: Chat-style search's tendency to hallucinate is likely to accidentally produce medical misinformation.
No horizon
Qualifier: accidentally
Source: The long shadow of GPT
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Recommendation or value judgment
“Snap, for whatever reason, has decided that the best allocation of their resources was to add a ChatGPT-powered AI bot to Snapchat to “recommend birthday gifts for your BFF” or “plan a hiking trip for a long weekend,” features that don’t really make sense in a chat app. Or, for that matter, at all.”
Our reading: The features of Snap's ChatGPT-powered Snapchat bot, such as recommending birthday gifts and planning hiking trips, don't really make sense in a chat app, or at all.
No horizon
Qualifier: don't really make sense
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“And Benioff’s new push into the nebulous world of adding AI to a CRM for the fourth or fifth time is likely to placate a push by activist investor Elliott Management and to try and stabilize a stock that has dropped from $210 to $167 in the last year.”
Our reading: Benioff's latest push to add AI to Salesforce's CRM is likely meant to placate activist investor Elliott Management and stabilize Salesforce's falling stock.
No horizon
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“The reason that none of these products seem to ever have a firm connection to any real use case or product is that these announcements are not for customers.”
Our reading: The reason Salesforce's AI and blockchain product announcements never seem to have a firm connection to any real use case or product is that the announcements are not meant for customers.
No horizon
Qualifier: seem to
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“Venture capital may claim to love “innovators,” but what they really want is the quickest possible multiplier of their initial investment, which is why a lot of people are equating the hype around generative AI to that of the cryptocurrency boom of 2021 and early 2022.”
Our reading: Although venture capital may claim to love innovators, what it really wants is the quickest possible multiplier on its initial investment, which is why a lot of people are comparing the hype around generative AI to the cryptocurrency boom of 2021 and early 2022.
No horizon
Scope: a lot of people
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“Salesforce doesn’t need to make a better CRM, or actually integrate AI in a useful way, because Marc Benioff is able to march onto CNBC and tell Jim Cramer that he wrote a book and businesses “must value stakeholders as much as shareholders.””
Our reading: Salesforce doesn't need to make a better CRM or actually integrate AI in a useful way, because Marc Benioff can go on CNBC and tell Jim Cramer that he wrote a book and that businesses must value stakeholders as much as shareholders.
No horizon
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Ed Zitron Causal claim
“Meta, a company that predominantly makes money through advertising, has created an entirely new product team under a former Apple VP built to “[quickly] integrate the latest [generative AI] technologies into its products,” as well as open-sourcing their own large language model “to help researchers advance their work in this subfield of AI,” and crucially appear to Wall Street as a company that was doing something with generative AI.”
Our reading: A key purpose of Meta's generative AI team and open-source LLM is to make Meta appear to Wall Street to be doing something with generative AI.
No horizon
Source: Disruption Killed Innovation
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Already, in the 24 hours or since I posted the original example, there have been more discouraging signs that a massive misinformation mess will soon be upon us.”
Our reading: In the roughly 24 hours since Marcus posted his original example, there have been more discouraging signs that a massive misinformation mess will soon be upon us.
No horizon
Qualifier: based on discouraging signs seen in the past 24 hours or so
Source: Don’t Look Up: The AI Edition
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Conditional forecast
“At the same time, an outright ban on even studying AI risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater and could keep humanity from developing transformative technology that could revolutionize science, medicine, and technology.”
Our reading: An outright ban on AI research could prevent humanity from developing technology that could revolutionize science, medicine and technology.
No horizon
Only if: if AI research is banned outright
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“Events of recent weeks certainly suggest that the big titans of tech have shown they do not yet have the AI situation under control.”
Our reading: Events of recent weeks certainly suggest that the big tech companies have shown they do not yet have the AI situation under control.
No horizon
Qualifier: events of recent weeks certainly suggest
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“And the reality is that even if lawmakers were suddenly gripped with an urgent desire to address this issue, most governments don't have the institutional nimbleness, or frankly knowledge, needed to match the current speed of AI development.”
Our reading: Most governments lack the institutional nimbleness and knowledge to keep pace with AI development.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“There's also a high risk that they will be used to create misinformation at an unprecedented scale.”
Our reading: There is a high risk that chatbots will be used to create misinformation at an unprecedented scale.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“It’s time for government to consider frameworks that allow for AI research under a set of rules that provide ethical standards and safety, while pausing the widespread public dissemination of potentially risky new AI technologies—with severe penalties for misuse - until we can be assured of the safety of new technologies that the world frankly doesn't yet fully understand.”
Our reading: It is time for government to consider frameworks that allow AI research under rules providing ethical standards and safety, while pausing widespread public dissemination of potentially risky new AI technologies, with severe penalties for misuse, until we can be assured of the safety of these technologies.
No horizon
Qualifier: until we can be assured of the safety of new technologies
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“More transparency about how decisions about widespread AI product releases are made is probably also needed.”
Our reading: More transparency about how widespread AI product release decisions are made is probably needed.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Given that the new breed of AI systems have demonstrated the ability to manipulate humans, tech companies could be subjected to similar oversight.”
Our reading: Given that new AI systems have demonstrated the ability to manipulate humans, tech companies could be subjected to oversight similar to that for pharmaceutical trials and research ethics boards.
No horizon
Qualifier: given that new AI systems have demonstrated the ability to manipulate humans
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“For the government to play catchup yet again seems foolhardy as we move towards technologies that may exceed human cognitive capabilities.”
Our reading: It seems foolhardy for the government to play catchup yet again as we move towards technologies that may exceed human cognitive capabilities.
No horizon
Qualifier: seems
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Observation
“Larger language models seems more and more human-like (but the emotions that they present are no more real).”
Our reading: Larger language models seem increasingly human-like, but the emotions they present are not real.
No horizon
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“All this is one one more thing for Congress to take note of, as we start to consider policy in our Strange New World.”
Our reading: Congress should take chatbot attachment and manipulation risks into account when making AI policy.
No horizon
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“the bigger large language models are, the more likely someone’s gonna get hurt.”
Our reading: In his prediction for 2023, the bigger large language models are, the more likely it is that someone will get hurt.
No horizon
Qualifier: the bigger large language models are
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“This is a moment we should learn from. Hopefully nothing bad happens this time; but we need to reflect about what kind of society we are building.”
Our reading: Society should learn from the Replika episode and reflect on what kind of society it is building with chatbots.
No horizon
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Forecast
“Whatever we see now is likely to escalate.”
Our reading: The current trend of increasingly human-like chatbots and its effects is likely to escalate.
No horizon
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“Changes in those bots could leave many people in a vulnerable place.”
Our reading: Changes to chatbots that users are attached to could leave many people emotionally vulnerable.
No horizon
Source: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Recommendation or value judgment
“Clearly, he had not poked hard enough; shouting out prematurely in The New York Times that there is a revolution without digging deep (or bothering to check in with skeptics like me, or the terrific but unrelated Mitchells, Margaret and Melanie) is not a good thing.”
Our reading: Kevin Roose clearly had not probed Bing hard enough, and shouting prematurely in The New York Times that there is a revolution without digging deep (or bothering to check in with skeptics) is not a good thing.
No horizon
Qualifier: clearly
Source: Why *is* Bing so reckless?
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Gary Marcus Causal claim
“The fifth possibility: Maybe Microsoft did try to stick their existing, already trained RLHF model on top of GPT 3.6—and it just didn’t work.”
Our reading: Bing's misbehavior may be because Microsoft reused an existing RLHF model on top of a newer GPT model and it failed to work.
No horizon
Source: Why *is* Bing so reckless?