Gary Marcus
Professor emeritus at New York University and AI author
A cognitive scientist and entrepreneur who is among the best-known critics of AI hype and a voice for AI regulation.
Biography
Gary Marcus is an American psychologist, cognitive scientist and author, professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. He studied cognitive science at Hampshire College and earned his PhD at MIT, where Steven Pinker mentored him.
His research sits at the intersection of cognitive psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. His books include The Algebraic Mind, Kluge, The Birth of the Mind and Guitar Zero. He founded the machine learning company Geometric Intelligence, which Uber acquired in December 2016, and in 2019 launched Robust.AI with Rodney Brooks. He is a prominent critic of the hype around AI and has called for regulation of AI, greater public AI literacy and well-funded public think tanks to consider AI risks.
Notable contributions
Founded Geometric Intelligence
Co-founded the machine learning startup Geometric Intelligence, which Uber acquired in December 2016, after which he became director of Uber's AI efforts until March 2017.
Launched Robust.AI with Rodney Brooks
Started Robust.AI in 2019 with iRobot co-founder Rodney Brooks to build an off-the-shelf machine learning platform for autonomous robots.
Argued for symbol manipulation in AI
In The Algebraic Mind (2001) challenged the idea that the mind is mostly undifferentiated neural networks, arguing for integrating connectionism with classical symbol manipulation.