Gary Marcus

Rank 13 of 47
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Score 83
5/18/2025, 12:11:46 AM
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In reply to:
Colin Fraser
@colin_fraser
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240d
@littmath @GaryMarcus @MelMitchell1 @rao2z You must admit (I know I don’t have to convince you) it’s strange that such an intelligent entity would be so bad at tic tac toe
Colin Fraser
@colin_fraser
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240d
@littmath @GaryMarcus @MelMitchell1 @rao2z That, I theorize, is why o3 can’t do this but it can do like algebraic geometry or whatever. This involves checking many cases, thinking steps ahead for each one, backtracking, and so on. It’s easy work but it’s work and there’s a lot of it.
Colin Fraser
@colin_fraser
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241d
@rapid_rar @irl_danB @CHaesemeyer No. Maybe if it thought for more than 3 minutes it would have found a better move.
Colin Fraser
@colin_fraser
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240d
@littmath @GaryMarcus @MelMitchell1 @rao2z I think we’ve talked about this before and you disagreed with me but I’ll ask again; I’ve found the hallmark of problems that they do badly at is they involve a lot of “busywork”—trying many cases, finding the correct path out of many possible options, etc. Do you find this?
Daniel Litt
@littmath
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240d
@GaryMarcus @colin_fraser @MelMitchell1 @rao2z Let me put it this way—they can very reliably solve some out-of-distribution hard problems that humans can’t reliably solve. Being able to solve *all* problems is not a pre-condition for intelligence; otherwise people aren’t intelligent.
Gary Marcus
@GaryMarcus
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240d
@littmath @colin_fraser @MelMitchell1 @rao2z Some, but not reliably. They can’t even solve large multiplication problems reliably.

LLMs exceed their predecessors but demonstrably still have not solved this problem, which is most clear when the training set is known, and when direct data augmentation is not possible.

Some
Daniel Litt
@littmath
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240d
@GaryMarcus @colin_fraser @MelMitchell1 @rao2z They’re clearly generalizing out of distribution. E.g. they can solve some novel math problems.

The statement is part of a lighthearted conversation about AI's ability to perform tasks like playing tic-tac-toe. It humorously suggests that AI struggles with simple tasks despite its capabilities in complex areas. The tone is casual and playful, focusing on the quirks of AI rather than engaging in a serious debate about intelligence.