Gary Marcus lists spiritual precursors to the LLM paradigm
nabeelqu · x · 2026-08-21
Gary Marcus shared a list of non-AI works that he considers spiritual precursors to the LLM paradigm, with reasoning:
- Memento: Character wakes fresh, leaves notes to self as "external memory".
- End of Evangelion: Instrumentality, human-machine symbiosis.
- Lord of the Rings: Power.
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb: Arms races, existential risk attitudes towards powerful tech.
- Impro: Chapter on masks; human creativity as high-tempo next-token completion.
- Parfit, "Personal Identity": Useful for theorizing machine identity.
- Ender’s Game: Ethics in simulated envs, perils of competitiveness, power of posting.
- Library of Babel: Abundance of text, 'slop'/meaning.
Related event: Gary Marcus Cites Non-AI Works as Spiritual Precursors of LLMs(2 posts)→
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