Gary Marcus


Gary F. Marcus is a scientist, author, and entrepreneur who is a professor in the Department of Psychology at New York University and was founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company later acquired by Uber.
His books include Guitar Zero, which appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list and Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, a New York Times Editors' Choice. With Jeremy Freeman, he was co-editor of The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientists.

Biography

Marcus attended Hampshire College, where he designed his own major, Cognitive Science, working on human reasoning. He continued on to graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his advisor was the experimental psychologist Steven Pinker. He received his Ph.D. in 1993.
His books include The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and Guitar Zero, which appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. He edited The Norton Psychology Reader, and was co-editor with Jeremy Freeman of The Future of the Brain: Essays by the World's Leading Neuroscientist, which included Nobel Laureates May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser.
In 2014, he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company. It was acquired by Uber in 2016.

Theories of language and mind

Marcus' research and theories focus on the intersection between biology and psychology. How do the brain and mind relate when it comes to understanding language? Marcus takes an innatism stance on this debate and through his psychological evidence has given many answers to open questions such as, "If there is something built in at birth, how does it get there?" He challenged connectionist theories which posit that the mind is only made up of randomly arranged neurons. Marcus argues that neurons can be put together to build circuits in order to do things such as process rules or process structured representations.

Research and written work

Marcus’ early work focused on why children produce overregularizations, such as "breaked" and "goed", as a test case for the nature of mental rules.
In his first book, The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science, Marcus challenged the idea that the mind might consist of largely undifferentiated neural networks. He argued that understanding the mind would require integrating connectionism with classical ideas about symbol-manipulation.
In his second book, published in 2004, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought, Marcus goes into a more detailed explanation of the genetic support systems of human thought. He explains how a small number of genes account for the intricate human brain, common false impressions of genes, and the problems they may cause for the future of genetic engineering.
In 2005, Marcus was editor of The Norton Psychology Reader, including selections by cognitive scientists on modern science of the human mind.
Marcus' 2012 book, Guitar Zero, explores the process of taking up a musical instrument as an adult.

Publications

Books