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Gary Marcus has been writing a piece like this roughly every 2 months for 20 years, and he gets a lot of attention because he seems respectable (he is not), and
by hiddencost 11mo ago
Gary Marcus has been writing a piece like this roughly every 2 months for 20 years, and he gets a lot of attention because he seems respectable (he is not), and many papers are looking for a respectable source that has this opinion.
- nextworddev 11mo agoHe’s playing the Nouriel Roubini game (another NYU adj prof). Last time I checked Nouriel was partying up in the Hamptons so being a permabear is lucrative.
- an0malous 11mo agoWhy is he not respectable?
- pols45 11mo agoCause he hasn't built anything or found a job since he sold his last company ages ago.
- Supermancho 11mo agoRespect can be earned through many means, not just through goalposts set by financiers.
- pols45 11mo agoGary Marcus is not changing the story financiers are telling each other about AI. He has been telling the same story without making a dent in their stories. And that is because he is not in the arena. What he says, does and thinks doesn't matter.
- anothernewdude 11mo agoSo upon finding success, he has escaped the struggle that people are forced into against their will. How unreasonable of him.
- ants_everywhere 11mo agoGary Marcus has a very particular view of human psychology that was popular for a while, especially in the early 2000s. Major proponents include Steven Pinker, Noam Chomsky, Jerry Fodor. This view was heavily influenced by symbolic computers when symbolic computers were new and so held some mental share leading into the dotcom boom. For several reasons, one of which is the replication crisis, this view is no longer nearly as popular. One of the major beliefs of this view is that LLMs are essentially impossible because there's not enough information in language to learn it unless you have a special purpose language-learning module built into the brain by evolution. This is Chomsky's "poverty of the stimulus" argument. Marcus still defends this view and because of this bias is committed to trying to prove to everyone that LLMs are not possible or at least that they're some kind of illusion. There's a sense in which they threaten his fundamental concept of how the brain works. In proposing and defending these views he appears to me and others to be having a sort of internal crisis that's playing out publicly where his need to be right about this is coloring his judgment and objectivity.
- pinnochio 11mo ago> LLMs are essentially impossible > trying to prove to everyone that LLMs are not possible or at least that they're some kind of illusion This is such poor phrasing I can't help but wonder if it was intentional. The argument is over whether LLMs are capable of AGI, not whether "LLMs are possible". You also 100% do not have to buy into Chomsky's theory of the brain to believe LLMs won't achieve AGI.
- ants_everywhere 11mo agoWe weren't talking about AGI. It sounds like that's a topic you are interested in. It's a fine topic just not the one we're discussing. And my phrasing was wonderful and perfect.
- dvfjsdhgfv 11mo ago> And my phrasing was wonderful and perfect. Do you use LLMs to post on HN? I'm asking seriously.
- chmaynard 11mo agoNicely done! An ad hominem attack, the lowest form of discourse.