Keen On

It hasn’t always been easy being Gary Marcus these last few years. OpenAI’s most persistently outspoken AI sceptic has been in minority, sometimes of one, in his critique both of Sam Altman’s claims about the imminence of AGI as well as the general “intelligence” and economic viability of ChatGPT. Since the supposedly “botched” release of GPT-5, however, even Sam Altman seems to want to be Gary Marcus. For Gary, who has endured what he diplomatically calls "an unbelievable amount of s**t" for his contrarian views, the irony is particularly delicious. He now finds himself vindicated as the very company he's criticized adopts his language of caution and scaled-back expectations. "It's not that I'm becoming like him," Gary says about Sam with Marcusian humility, "but that he's becoming like me." Rather than Son of Sam, OpenAI is now the Son of Gary story. 1. The GPT-5 Reality Check Changed EverythingGPT-5's underwhelming performance—described as barely different from GPT-4.1—shattered the industry's faith in sc