https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/lets-be-honest-generative-ai-isnt

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Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

A sampling of recent news

 
Gary Marcus's avatar
Gary Marcus
Jan 12, 2026
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Some recent news, all long anticipated by this newsletter:

 1. LLMs can still cannot be trusted:

 
[https]
Full article

 2. A large fraction of what LLMs do is mostly just memorization (and
    Hinton was on the wrong side of this argument):

 
[https]
Full article here.

 3. They still aren't adding a lot of quantifiable value to the
    world:

 
[https]
via newsletter

Update: This is consistent with the finding of the Remote Labor Index
that AI could only do about 2.5% of jobs, reported recently by the
Washington Post.

 4. Scaling isn't going all that well, anymore, and probably won't
    cure these problems.

 
[https]
Full article

Trying to orient our economy and geopolitical policy around such
shoddy technology -- particularly on the unproven hopes that it will
dramatically improve- is a mistake.

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Gary Marcus's avatar
Gary Marcus
1dEdited
Author

dang I knew i had seen something else recently that i meant to
include. now added as an update on #3.

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6 replies
 
Jared's avatar
Jared
1d
Liked by Gary Marcus

The fundamental problem with generative AI is that the creators
overpromised. The underlying technology itself is fine. There is a
real business here.

It is just not what the creators are saying it is. It is
substantially smaller and less significant.

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