Berliner Boersenzeitung - Generative AI's most prominent skeptic doubles down

EUR -
AED 4.178426
AFN 79.167405
ALL 98.060105
AMD 436.693803
ANG 2.036005
AOA 1043.791486
ARS 1347.252549
AUD 1.759577
AWG 2.049169
AZN 1.910892
BAM 1.953039
BBD 2.298032
BDT 139.074868
BGN 1.955683
BHD 0.428824
BIF 3388.066486
BMD 1.137637
BND 1.466514
BOB 7.864814
BRL 6.409417
BSD 1.138181
BTN 97.511887
BWP 15.278204
BYN 3.724802
BYR 22297.685477
BZD 2.286248
CAD 1.561105
CDF 3259.330522
CHF 0.936956
CLF 0.027864
CLP 1069.276332
CNY 8.195875
CNH 8.180412
COP 4694.720795
CRC 579.375992
CUC 1.137637
CUP 30.147381
CVE 110.105017
CZK 24.891196
DJF 202.180553
DKK 7.458914
DOP 67.20501
DZD 149.875728
EGP 56.505179
ERN 17.064555
ETB 155.405078
FJD 2.56344
FKP 0.839728
GBP 0.841209
GEL 3.117211
GGP 0.839728
GHS 11.64344
GIP 0.839728
GMD 81.910185
GNF 9864.666646
GTQ 8.741107
GYD 238.121336
HKD 8.925001
HNL 29.655084
HRK 7.532635
HTG 148.99809
HUF 403.609734
IDR 18587.509883
ILS 4.004539
IMP 0.839728
INR 97.50744
IQD 1490.992566
IRR 47922.959241
ISK 144.605271
JEP 0.839728
JMD 181.553385
JOD 0.806578
JPY 163.677557
KES 147.039767
KGS 99.4862
KHR 4564.488169
KMF 494.301134
KPW 1023.8033
KRW 1566.912621
KWD 0.34897
KYD 0.948447
KZT 582.940922
LAK 24583.037173
LBP 101979.96065
LKR 340.69748
LRD 227.066061
LSL 20.384234
LTL 3.359146
LVL 0.688145
LYD 6.196242
MAD 10.466093
MDL 19.576072
MGA 5172.643292
MKD 61.499701
MMK 2388.355188
MNT 4069.813709
MOP 9.197619
MRU 44.991407
MUR 51.682917
MVR 17.587556
MWK 1973.593089
MXN 21.911026
MYR 4.829247
MZN 72.706455
NAD 20.385486
NGN 1800.549212
NIO 41.880069
NOK 11.54164
NPR 156.020103
NZD 1.895605
OMR 0.43742
PAB 1.138181
PEN 4.120803
PGK 4.676205
PHP 63.373191
PKR 322.141749
PLN 4.27755
PYG 9094.145937
QAR 4.14997
RON 5.057479
RSD 117.214173
RUB 89.845321
RWF 1610.402553
SAR 4.267057
SBD 9.500142
SCR 16.756107
SDG 683.151078
SEK 10.944521
SGD 1.466613
SHP 0.894004
SLE 25.846723
SLL 23855.679611
SOS 650.474873
SRD 42.260376
STD 23546.789313
SVC 9.95853
SYP 14791.345992
SZL 20.376021
THB 37.132267
TJS 11.267874
TMT 3.987418
TND 3.388011
TOP 2.664462
TRY 44.512313
TTD 7.723016
TWD 34.134226
TZS 3060.243236
UAH 47.272613
UGX 4145.141077
USD 1.137637
UYU 47.451054
UZS 14607.774913
VES 107.900918
VND 29641.132404
VUV 137.46876
WST 3.141781
XAF 655.022526
XAG 0.03295
XAU 0.000339
XCD 3.074521
XDR 0.81106
XOF 655.005278
XPF 119.331742
YER 277.413054
ZAR 20.335376
ZMK 10240.097137
ZMW 30.559537
ZWL 366.318654
  • RBGPF

    -1.5000

    67.5

    -2.22%

  • CMSC

    0.0470

    22.117

    +0.21%

  • RYCEF

    0.1600

    12.04

    +1.33%

  • NGG

    -0.5350

    71.395

    -0.75%

  • AZN

    0.2500

    72.18

    +0.35%

  • VOD

    -0.0750

    10.325

    -0.73%

  • GSK

    -1.1450

    40.51

    -2.83%

  • BTI

    1.0550

    46.445

    +2.27%

  • RIO

    -0.6700

    58.91

    -1.14%

  • BP

    0.0120

    29.577

    +0.04%

  • RELX

    -0.5500

    54.03

    -1.02%

  • CMSD

    0.0128

    22.0789

    +0.06%

  • BCE

    -0.3800

    21.9

    -1.74%

  • BCC

    1.9750

    87.075

    +2.27%

  • SCS

    0.3700

    10.56

    +3.5%

  • JRI

    0.0340

    12.95

    +0.26%

Generative AI's most prominent skeptic doubles down
Generative AI's most prominent skeptic doubles down / Photo: Don MacKinnon - AFP

Generative AI's most prominent skeptic doubles down

Two and a half years since ChatGPT rocked the world, scientist and writer Gary Marcus still remains generative artificial intelligence's great skeptic, playing a counter-narrative to Silicon Valley's AI true believers.

Text size:

Marcus became a prominent figure of the AI revolution in 2023, when he sat beside OpenAI chief Sam Altman at a Senate hearing in Washington as both men urged politicians to take the technology seriously and consider regulation.

Much has changed since then. Altman has abandoned his calls for caution, instead teaming up with Japan's SoftBank and funds in the Middle East to propel his company to sky-high valuations as he tries to make ChatGPT the next era-defining tech behemoth.

"Sam's not getting money anymore from the Silicon Valley establishment," and his seeking funding from abroad is a sign of "desperation," Marcus told AFP on the sidelines of the Web Summit in Vancouver, Canada.

Marcus's criticism centers on a fundamental belief: generative AI, the predictive technology that churns out seemingly human-level content, is simply too flawed to be transformative.

The large language models (LLMs) that power these capabilities are inherently broken, he argues, and will never deliver on Silicon Valley's grand promises.

"I'm skeptical of AI as it is currently practiced," he said. "I think AI could have tremendous value, but LLMs are not the way there. And I think the companies running it are not mostly the best people in the world."

His skepticism stands in stark contrast to the prevailing mood at the Web Summit, where most conversations among 15,000 attendees focused on generative AI's seemingly infinite promise.

Many believe humanity stands on the cusp of achieving super intelligence or artificial general intelligence (AGI) technology that could match and even surpass human capability.

That optimism has driven OpenAI's valuation to $300 billion, unprecedented levels for a startup, with billionaire Elon Musk's xAI racing to keep pace.

Yet for all the hype, the practical gains remain limited.

The technology excels mainly at coding assistance for programmers and text generation for office work. AI-created images, while often entertaining, serve primarily as memes or deepfakes, offering little obvious benefit to society or business.

Marcus, a longtime New York University professor, champions a fundamentally different approach to building AI -- one he believes might actually achieve human-level intelligence in ways that current generative AI never will.

"One consequence of going all-in on LLMs is that any alternative approach that might be better gets starved out," he explained.

This tunnel vision will "cause a delay in getting to AI that can help us beyond just coding -- a waste of resources."

- 'Right answers matter' -

Instead, Marcus advocates for neurosymbolic AI, an approach that attempts to rebuild human logic artificially rather than simply training computer models on vast datasets, as is done with ChatGPT and similar products like Google's Gemini or Anthropic's Claude.

He dismisses fears that generative AI will eliminate white-collar jobs, citing a simple reality: "There are too many white-collar jobs where getting the right answer actually matters."

This points to AI's most persistent problem: hallucinations, the technology's well-documented tendency to produce confident-sounding mistakes.

Even AI's strongest advocates acknowledge this flaw may be impossible to eliminate.

Marcus recalls a telling exchange from 2023 with LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, a Silicon Valley heavyweight: "He bet me any amount of money that hallucinations would go away in three months. I offered him $100,000 and he wouldn't take the bet."

Looking ahead, Marcus warns of a darker consequence once investors realize generative AI's limitations. Companies like OpenAI will inevitably monetize their most valuable asset: user data.

"The people who put in all this money will want their returns, and I think that's leading them toward surveillance," he said, pointing to Orwellian risks for society.

"They have all this private data, so they can sell that as a consolation prize."

Marcus acknowledges that generative AI will find useful applications in areas where occasional errors don't matter much.

"They're very useful for auto-complete on steroids: coding, brainstorming, and stuff like that," he said.

"But nobody's going to make much money off it because they're expensive to run, and everybody has the same product."

(B.Hartmann--BBZ)