Gary Marcus Quotes

born 1970 United States

Gary Marcus (born 1970) is an American psychologist, cognitive scientist, and author, known for his research on the intersection of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence (AI).

United States
Academics

Random Gary Marcus quote

37 quotes

There's also toxicity problems with these systems... [E]ven with so-called guardrails, it's very easy to get these systems to say things that are truly vile.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

Noam Chomsky is perhaps the scholar most identified with nativism, ...children ...born with a “language acquisition device”... or what Steven Pinker... called a "language instinct."

Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence (2018)

A few companies own System 1.., they own the technology and the GPUs to run it... [etc.,] but it's not too late to develop a new approach to AI that can be a public good, working in the public interest.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

It all sounds very plausible. When I went on 60 Minutes last year I called it all "authoritative bullshit"

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

Generative AI... has a personality problem.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

They're talking about things like synthesizing data. Well I heard that with driverless cars for years. It still hasn't made driverless cars that we can trust.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

Sam Altman was fired and everybody started talking about this algorithm Q... Ilya Sutskever had seen it and it was going to change the world. I don't that's actually gone anywhere yet.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

I am not an anti-connectionist; I am opposed only to a... subset of possible connectionist models.

The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and cognitive Science (2001)

I started writing about it right away in my Substack and I said immediately that it’s going to excite people but it has limits.

Interview: Cognitive Scientist Gary Marcus’ Lifelong Disillusionment with A.I (2025)

I focus on... multilayer perceptrons because these are... discussed when researchers consider the relation between connectionism and symbol-manipulation.

The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and cognitive Science (2001)

For developmental dyslexia... [∃] several candidate genes (DYX1C1, K1AA0319, DCDC2, and ROBO1). ...[H]ighly similar versions of each are found in other primates and in rodents.

Genes and Language (2011)

In... the biology of innateness... I made a foundational distinction between... "prewiring" and "rewiring", and suggested that the biological evidence for both processes was overwhelming.

Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence (2018)

The EU has made real progress in regulating AI. The United States has not.

Gary Marcus - Taming Silicon Valley (2024)

[N]ativism is hardly a central topic in contemporary AI thought.

Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence (2018)

Connectionism... taken... broadly... could help us answer... what the mind's basic building blocks are and how those... could be implemented in the brain.

The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and cognitive Science (2001)

[I]f we cannot count on our AI to behave reliably, we should not trust it.

The Next Decade in AI: Four Steps Towards Robust Artificial Intelligence (2020)

Pinker, Peter Marler... and myself... have frequently argued... [that] a significant part of a creature’s innate armamentarium consists... of [innate]... mechanisms... that enables learning.

Innateness, AlphaZero, and Artificial Intelligence (2018)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Gary Marcus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.