At Gizmodo, news writer Matt Novak reverses our expectations. He reports on an exaggerated claim for AI in a decidedly skeptical way.

The topic arose on an All-In podcast where tech billionaires claim that AI is on the verge of making science breakthrough discoveries — and Novak is skeptical of their claims. Here’s his take, in light of Grok’s recent MechaHiter debacle:

Calacanis asked Kalanick the obvious question of whether Grok was actually on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. Because anyone who actually understands large language models knows that it can’t achieve new ways of thinking. It’s just putting together words in the most statistically likely way, forming connections that may sound like a well-thought-out argument but are actually not a form of true “intelligence” as humans would define it.

“Is your perception that the LLMs are actually starting to get to the reasoning level, that they’ll come up with a novel concept theory and have that breakthrough? Or that we’re kind of reading into it and it’s just trying random stuff at the margins?” Calacanis asked.

Kalanick said that he hasn’t used Grok 4 because he was having technical difficulties accessing it, suggesting that perhaps a later version of Grok might be capable of such a thing. But he admitted the AI couldn’t yet come up with new discoveries.

“No, it cannot come up with the new idea. These things are so wedded to what is known. And they’re so like, even when I come up with a new idea, I have to really, it’s like pulling a donkey. You see, you’re pulling it because it doesn’t want to break conventional wisdom. It’s like really adhering to conventional wisdom. You’re pulling it out and then eventually goes, oh, shit, you got something,” Kalanick said.

Kalanick emphasized that “you have to double and triple check to make sure that you really got something,” making clear he understood that AI chatbots just make things up much of the time. But he still seemed convinced that the thing holding back Grok was “conventional wisdom” rather than the natural limitations of the tech.

“Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries,” July 15, 2025

Novak offers a relevant clip:

If tech media are catching on to the extent to which many claims about AI are simply boosterism in search of investment, the public discussion will soon become much more meaningful.

You may also wish to read: Grok as Hitler II?: What really happened and what it means. The long-postponed reckoning about what chatbots can and can’t really do is sure coming on fast. A vast army of boosters is portraying chatbots as magic when their usefulness is limited by realities that are probably a hard limit.