I think Gary Marcus seems to play the role of an “anti-AI-doom” figurehead much more than Timnit Gebru. I don’t even know what his views on doom are, but he has established himself as a prominent critic of “AI is improving fast” views and seemingly gets lots of engagement from the safety community.
I also think Marcus’ criticisms aren’t very compelling, and so the discourse they generate isn’t terribly valuable. I think similarly of Gebru’s criticism (I think it’s worse than Marcus’, actually), but I just don’t think it has as much impact on the safety community.
I think Gary Marcus seems to play the role of an “anti-AI-doom” figurehead much more than Timnit Gebru. I don’t even know what his views on doom are, but he has established himself as a prominent critic of “AI is improving fast” views and seemingly gets lots of engagement from the safety community.
I also think Marcus’ criticisms aren’t very compelling, and so the discourse they generate isn’t terribly valuable. I think similarly of Gebru’s criticism (I think it’s worse than Marcus’, actually), but I just don’t think it has as much impact on the safety community.