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Gary Marcus (post dated 2026-05-12) affirms the SE Gyges line that “partial…

2026-05-12 · 21:05 UTC ·@GaryMarcus ·1 min read

Brief

Gary Marcus (2026-05-12) insists his position is that LLMs sometimes “partially regurgitate” and that fluent repetition doesn’t equal understanding, endorsing SE Gyges’ wording. He claims Geoffrey Hinton has attributed a different, unfounded quote to him on Hinton’s website, calls that fabrication or out-of-context citation, and urges intellectual honesty from a Nobel laureate.

Why it matters

Gary Marcus (post dated 2026-05-12) affirms the SE Gyges line that “partial regurgitation, no matter how fluent, does not, and will not ever, constitute genuine comprehension,” and says LLMs do sometimes “partially regurgitate,” a point supported by a large body of literature on hallucinations and errors.

Key details

  • Marcus accuses Geoffrey Hinton of posting a quote on Hinton’s webpage that Marcus says is either fabricated or taken out of context; he could find no other source for the attribution and calls such misattribution intellectually dishonest, arguing it’s unfair for a Nobel laureate to attack a view he doesn’t hold.
Source evidence

Good science starts with intellectual honesty, and I am not seeing it.

I 100% believe the quote below and zero percent believe the seemingly similar– but actually very different—quote that @geoffreyhinton attributes to me (which I couldn’t find anywhere on Google except on his own webpage!).

what I actually said (see below) is that part of what LLMs do is regurgitate (“partially” is the key word); they sometimes do! a huge body of literature has made this clear. this is what I believe.

what Hinton has on his web page is either fabricated (nobody has found a source for it) or at the very least out of context with what i have said for years eg about hallucinations and boneheaded errors (which are certainly not literal verbatim repetitions; that’s the whole point).

attacking a view that I clearly do not hold is not fair play — and certainly beneath what someone with a @NobelPrize should do.

SE Gyges (@segyges)

"Partial regurgitation, no matter how fluent, does not, and will not ever, constitute genuine comprehension.

Getting to real AI will require a different approach."

— https://nitter.net/segyges/status/2054297170002739315#m