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

Gary Marcus Marcus on AI Published

Six months after the Pause letter, AI is still erratic — and still something we should still be deeply concerned about

We recorded 9 claims from this post. 7 were checked against evidence. 2 can’t be checked. 8 more are held. Read the post at its source.

Claims from this post (9)

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: UnresolvedSaid

    “We have vastly more attention on AI policy, throughout the world, and I definitely give the pause letter (which I signed but didn’t write) some credit for that.”

    What we tested: Global attention on AI policy has vastly increased since March 2023, and the pause letter deserves some credit for that.

  2. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “My own guess is that between the release of GPT-4 in November 2022 and the May 2023 testimony OpenAI ran some preliminary tests and decided that the system would not meet expectations.”

    What we tested: Marcus guesses that, between GPT-4's release (which he dates to November 2022) and the May 2023 testimony, OpenAI ran some preliminary tests and decided GPT-5 would not meet expectations, and that this explains why it is not training GPT-5.

  3. Assessment: SupportedSaid

    “Voluntary guidelines aren’t laws, and they aren’t enforcement mechanisms, either; companies can still do as they please.”

    What we tested: At least in the United States, voluntary AI guidelines are not laws or enforcement mechanisms, and companies can still do as they please.

    What happened: The instrument expressly distinguishes voluntary commitments from future regulations. Reading the complete document reveals no new statutory authority, compulsory enforcement process or penalties for failing to implement its eight safeguards. (White House, )

  4. Assessment: SupportedSaid

    “At least in the United States, policy around AI is still largely notional, not actual.”

    What we tested: US AI policy remains largely notional rather than actual.

    What happened: The administration described major executive and legislative safeguards as work still to come. This directly supports the contextual reading of the claim. (White House, )

  5. Assessment: SupportedSaid

    “Large language models still make stuff up (“hallucinate”), still can’t be trusted in their reasoning, and remain unreliable.”

    What we tested: LLMs still hallucinate and their reasoning cannot be trusted.

    What happened: Human fact-checking found substantial unsupported content in generated biographies. These are factual-precision measurements against the study's knowledge source, not general error rates for every ChatGPT answer. (Sewon Min and colleagues, via arXiv, )

  6. Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid

    “We have far too little machinery in place to surveil or address such threats.”

    What we tested: We have far too little machinery in place to surveil or address threats such as a new form of bioweapon attack that could arise if superintelligent AI were at some point imminent and posed a genuine threat.

  7. Assessment: UnresolvedSaid

    “If we don’t know what is in the data sets, we can’t know what biases these systems will spread through society if they are widely used, we can’t know the extent to which individual content creatore are being exploited, and worse any outside efforts to mitigate risks are greatly undermined.”

    What we tested: If we don't know what is in AI training data sets, we can't know what biases these systems will spread through society if widely used or the extent to which individual content creators are being exploited, and outside efforts to mitigate risks are greatly undermined.

  8. Assessment: UnresolvedSaid

    “The apparent economics of AI (we will see if they yet come to pass as imagined) are too seductive to too many, to people building AI companies, to people investing in AI companies, to people getting paid 6 and even 7 digit salaries, and to people expecting campaign donations from big tech companies.”

    What we tested: The apparent economics of AI, which may or may not come to pass as imagined, are too seductive to too many people (AI company builders, investors, people paid 6- and 7-digit salaries, and those expecting big-tech campaign donations) for any AI moratorium to happen in the near term.

  9. Assessment: UnresolvedSaid

    “We are obviously never going to have a moratorium anytime in the near-term.”

    What we tested: There will be no moratorium on AI development in the near term.

Held from this post (8)

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