Gary Marcus

Gary Marcus is the Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. A highly influential figure in AI, Gary is a leading psychologist and cognitive scientist calling for the regulation of AI and funding of public think tanks to consider the potential risks of AI. Vocalising his concerns with the premature deployment of AI technology and the dangerous implications this has; he recently gave a passionate speech at the TED stage titled The Urgent Risks of Runaway AI – and What to Do about Them. An expert on AI bias, misinformation, risks of AI-designed chemical weapons, regulation and mitigation, Gary is highly sought after for speaking engagements.

Educated at Hampshire College, Gary graduated with a BA in Cognitive Science before enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to complete a PhD in Cognitive Science. He was supervised by the renowned Canadian cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker and focused his research on the negative evidence in language acquisition and regularisation in children’s acquisition of grammatical morphology. He founded Geometric AI, becoming Director of Uber’s AI efforts after the company was acquired in 2016. In 2019, he founded Robust AI with Rodney Brooks, the distinguished co-founder of iRobot.

Author of five books, Gary wrote The Birth of the Mind, The Algebraic Mind, Kluge and the New York Times Bestseller Guitar Zero. He also co-wrote Rebooting AI with Ernest Davis, earning a position on the Forbes 7 Must Read Books in AI. A thought leader in AI, Gary regularly contributes articles to notable publications, including The New York Times, Wired and The New Yorker.

A world-leading expert in human language development and cognitive neuroscience, Gary is a futurist able to accurately predict the challenges and limitations of contemporary AI. One of the most prominent advocates for the regulation of AI, he signed an open letter calling for a moratorium on the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 until robust safeguards can be implemented. Although Gary is outspoken about the dangers of AI, he is more concerned with the premature deployment of AI rather than AI technology itself. In his speaking engagements, he eloquently shares his concerns about the rate AI is being propagated without robust safeguards, highlighting several threats that have destabilising implications.