Gary Fred Marcus (born 1970) is an American
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...
,
cognitive scientist
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...
, and
author
In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...
, known for his research on the intersection of
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of human mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, whi ...
,
neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...
, and
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI).
Marcus is professor ''
emeritus
''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus".
In some c ...
'' of psychology and
neural science at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
. In 2014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
company later acquired by
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
.
His books include ''The Algebraic Mind'', ''Kluge'', ''The Birth of the Mind'', and the
''New York Times'' Bestseller ''
Guitar Zero''.
Early life
Marcus was born into a Jewish family in Baltimore, Maryland. He developed an early fascination with
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
and began coding at a young age.
Marcus majored in cognitive science at
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was opened in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges ...
. He continued on to graduate school at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
(MIT), where he conducted research on
negative evidence in language acquisition and
regularization (and over-regularization) in children's acquisition of
grammatical morphology.
During his PhD studies at MIT, he was mentored by
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psycholo ...
.
Career
In 2015 Marcus co-founded a machine-learning startup, Geometric Intelligence. When Geometric Intelligence was acquired by
Uber
Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...
in December 2016, he became the director of Uber's AI efforts, but left the company in March 2017.
In 2019 Marcus launched the startup, Robust.AI, with
Rodney Brooks
Rodney Allen Brooks (born 30 December 1954) is an Australian robotics, roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the behavior based robotics, actionist approach to ro ...
,
iRobot co-founder and co-inventor of the
Roomba. Robust.AI aims to build an "off-the-shelf" machine-learning platform for adoption in autonomous robots, similar to the way video-game engines can be adopted by third-party game developers.
Research
Marcus's early work focused on why children produce over-regularizations, such as "breaked" and "goed", as a test case for the nature of mental rules.
In his first book, ''The Algebraic Mind'' (2001), Marcus challenged the idea that the mind might consist of largely undifferentiated
neural networks
A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...
. He argued that understanding the mind would require integrating
connectionism
Connectionism is an approach to the study of human mental processes and cognition that utilizes mathematical models known as connectionist networks or artificial neural networks.
Connectionism has had many "waves" since its beginnings. The first ...
with classical ideas about symbol-manipulation.
Marcus's book, ''
Guitar Zero'' (2012), explores the process of taking up a musical instrument as an adult.
Marcus edited ''The Norton Psychology Reader'' (2005), including selections by
cognitive scientist
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...
s on modern science of the human mind.
With Jeremy Freeman he co-edited ''The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists'' (2014).
Language and mind
Marcus belongs to the school of thought of
psychological nativism. One of his books, ''The Birth of the Mind'' (2004), describes from a nativist perspective the ways that
gene
In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...
s can influence
cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...
, and aims to reconcile nativism with common anti-nativist arguments advanced by other academics. He discusses how a small number of genes account for the intricate human brain, common false impressions of genes, and the problems these false impressions may cause for the future of
genetic engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of Genetic engineering techniques, technologies used to change the genet ...
.
In a review, Mameli and
Papineau argue that the theory expounded in the book is "more sophisticated than any version of nativism on the market", but that in attempting to rebut anti-nativist arguments, Marcus "ends up reconfiguring the nativist position out of existence", prompting Mameli and Papineau to conclude that the nativist-anti-nativist framing should "be abandoned".
Artificial intelligence
Marcus is a notable critic of the "hype" surrounding
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
.
He has called for
regulation of AI, increased
AI literacy among the public, and "well-funded public thinktanks" to consider potential AI risks. He has also argued that AI is currently being deployed prematurely, particularly in situations that involve a risk of real-world harm resulting from
bias
Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individ ...
, as with
facial recognition or
résumé parsing, since current
deep-learning techniques are not amenable to
formal verification
In the context of hardware and software systems, formal verification is the act of proving or disproving the correctness of a system with respect to a certain formal specification or property, using formal methods of mathematics.
Formal ver ...
for
correctness.
Marcus has described current large language models as "approximations to
..language use rather than language understanding".
On 29 March 2023, Marcus and other researchers signed an
open letter
An open letter is a Letter (message), letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.
Open letters usually take the form of a letter (mess ...
calling for a 6-month moratorium on "the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4" until proper safeguards can be implemented, primarily citing the short-term risks of "mediocre AI that is unreliable
..but widely deployed". In 2024 he rushed into press his latest book urging public action to regulate generative AI.
[Marcus, G. F. (2024). Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us. MIT Press.]
Partial bibliography
Books
*Marcus, G. F. (2024). ''Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us''. MIT Press.
*Marcus, G.; Davis, E. (2019). ''Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust''. Pantheon/Random House.
*Marcus, G.; Freeman, J. (ed.) (2014). ''The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists''. Princeton University Press.
*Marcus, G. F. (2012). ''Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning''. The Penguin Press.
*Marcus, G. F. (2008). ''Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind''. Houghton Mifflin.
*Marcus, G. F. (ed.) (2006). ''The Norton Psychology Reader.'' W. W. Norton.
*Marcus, G. F. (2004). ''The Birth of The Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought.'' Basic Books.
*Marcus, G. F. (2001). ''The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science.'' MIT Press.
*Marcus, G. F., Pinker, S., Ullman, M., Hollander, M., Rosen, T. J., Xu, F., & Clahsen, H. (1992). Overregularization in language acquisition. ''Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 57''(4), i-178.
Articles
* Marcus, Gary, "Artificial Confidence: Even the newest, buzziest systems of artificial general intelligence are stymied by the same old problems", ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
'', vol. 327, no. 4 (October 2022), pp. 42–45.
* Marcus, Gary, "Am I Human?: Researchers need new ways to distinguish artificial intelligence from the natural kind", ''
Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
'', vol. 316, no. 3 (March 2017), pp. 58–63.
*Marcus, G. F., & Davis, E. (2013). How robust are probabilistic models of higher-level cognition? ''Psychological Science'', ''24''(12), 2351–2360.
*Marcus, G. F., Fernandes, K. J., & Johnson, S. P. (2007). Infant rule learning facilitated by speech. ''Psychological Science'', ''18''(5), 387–391.
*Marcus, G. F. (2006). Cognitive architecture and descent with modification. ''Cognition'', ''101''(2), 443–465.
*Marcus, G. F., & Fisher, S. E. (2003). FOXP2 in focus: what can genes tell us about speech and language? ''Trends in Cognitive Sciences'', ''7''(6), 257–262.
*Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Bandi Rao, S., & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. ''Science'', ''283''(5398), 77–80.
*Marcus, G. F. (1998). Rethinking eliminative connectionism. ''Cognitive Psychology'', ''37''(3), 243–282.
*Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., & Pinker, S. (1995). German inflection: The exception that proves the rule. ''Cognitive Psychology'', ''29''(3), 189–256.
References
External links
Substack
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marcus, Gary
Living people
1970 births
21st-century American psychologists
American cognitive scientists
Psycholinguistics
New York University faculty
Hampshire College alumni
Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni
American artificial intelligence researchers