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Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#41

Post by Yizahi »

Legend2440 wrote: post #3

Gary Marcus saying the same things Gary Marcus has always said. It doesn’t matter what incredible things neural networks do, in his mind they’re always a dead end that will collapse any day now.

There was once a blog (maybe it still exists, idk) called Bitfinexed, which researched fraud perpetrated by the Bitfinex/Tether creators. He forecast every month for multiple years an imminent Tether crash, based on the multiple data points and logical conclusions. His prediction was wrong, since Tether org is still alive and out of jail. But this doesn't mean that his chain of arguments and logic was wrong. It was simple a case when fraud and stakes were so big, that through corruptions and some assets infusions, the whole scheme had been saved.

Just because something is a case of "old man yelling at clouds" doesn't mean that underlying logic is always wrong. Sometimes markets can be irrational longer than we expect.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#42

Post by frozenseven »

didibus wrote: post #30
meroes wrote: post #8

Anyone have links for these: > Yann LeCun was first, fully coming around to his own, very similar critique of LLMs by end of 2022. > The Nobel Laureate and Google DeepMind CEO Sir Demis Hssabis sees it now, too.

For Yann LeCun, he says it here: https://www.weforum.org/meetings/world-economic-forum-annual... He's personally moved on from LLM and exploring new architecture more built around world models. Which he describes here: https://x.com/ylecun/status/1759933365241921817 Also I think the 2022 quoted refers to this Paper by Yann: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf

This is nonsense. LeCun is working on LLMs (and all the rest of it): https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14252

His work isn't all that different from what many other people in the space are doing. He just prefaces himself to be far more iconoclastic and "out there" than he actually is.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#44

Post by justlikereddit »

jonplackett wrote: post #6
Legend2440 wrote: post #3

Gary Marcus saying the same things Gary Marcus has always said. It doesn’t matter what incredible things neural networks do, in his mind they’re always a dead end that will collapse any day now.

There’s quite a gulf of difference between saying something is a dead end to full on general artificial intelligence, and saying it’s all dead and will collapse. I have no idea if LLMs will be general AI, but they defo aren’t going anywhere

I think the question we've failed to properly ask is "are all humans general intelligences".

I frequently encounter people who appear less refined in reasoning and communication than an LLM. Granted, being an awkward communicator is excusable but interrogation of these peoples belief systems seem to reveal a word model more than a world model.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#45

Post by user____name »

What are the odds they will just be stumbling around for another few decades before the next big discontinuous jump in effectiveness is uncovered? The AI Gods always had big ideas and opinions, but the discovery of LLMs seem to have been pure serendipidy.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#48

Post by didibus »

frozenseven wrote: post #42
didibus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Yann LeCun, he says it here: https://www.weforum.org/meetings/world-economic-forum-annual... He's personally moved on from LLM and exploring new architecture more built around world models. Which he describes here: https://x.com/ylecun/status/1759933365241921817 Also I think the 2022 quoted refers to this Paper by Yann: https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf

This is nonsense. LeCun is working on LLMs (and all the rest of it): https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14252 His work isn't all that different from what many other people in the space are doing. He just prefaces himself to be far more iconoclastic and "out there" than he actually is.

I'm just paraphrasing what he says in the interview I linked.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#49

Post by NaomiLehman »

labrador wrote: post #20

Is there a definition in the manual of mental disorders (DSM-5 in the US) for an addiction to feeling smug? If so we should call it Marcus Disorder.

Someone who seems "addicted to feeling smug" is likely seeking constant validation for a grandiose sense of self importance. The smugness is the emotional payoff. The fix. That temporarily works up their fragile self-esteem.

This pattern of behavior is most closely associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the DSM-5.

Re: Game over for pure LLMs. Even Rich Sutton has gotten off the bus

#50

Post by visarga »

stephen_cagle wrote: post #18

Referenced Article in this post -> http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html "We want AI agents that can discover like we can, not which contain what we have discovered. Building in our discoveries only makes it harder to see how the discovering process can be done." - I am curious if people would read this as an advocacy or criticism of LLMs?

Discovery comes from search for both humans and AI agents. There is no magic in the brain or LLM except learning along the way and persistence. The search space itself is externalized.

So the AI agents are "good enough" but environment access is insufficient for collecting the required experience, this is the current bottleneck.

For example even a simple model like AlphaZero (just a CNN) was good enough to beat the best humans and rediscover game play from scratch, but it had the extensive access to the environment.

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