At his Substack, AI analyst Gary Marcus calls attention to the sheer number of times AI proponents have falsely claimed that we nave reached the Singularity, where computers outpace humans in everything (and maybe they kill us or we merge with them or…)

He shows the receipts, as nicely illustrated by the X post at right, and goes on to provide many more.

Why do the tech bosses do this? First, they are raising money for their firms by making big promises (“CEO’s gotta CEO”).

Second, he notes, “Another reason not to take the whole lot of them seriously is that, so far as I know, none of them has actually defined what they mean. So far as I know nobody other than me even bothered to ask.” (July 28, 2026)

He calls the media support for that stuff “‘CEO said a thing’ journalism.”

If what the Singularity means depends on who we talk to, we can probably decide we are there whenever we want to be there.

The Singularity rehiring program

He goes on to point out that, meanwhile, tech CEOs who have dramatically fired human staff in favor of bots are now quietly rehiring them.

At Forbes: “Time reported this week on how some companies are beginning to follow a predictable model when it comes to rehiring workers after laying off those same employees due to their jobs being taken over by artificial intelligence (AI). The company first announces it is going to use an AI to do a job. The staff is downsized. Then six to twelve months pass and the AI has successfully managed 60% of the job duties, while unable to complete the remaining 40%, so the company hires the original staff members back. This gap in performance is real.” (May 21, 2026)

The fire-rehire problem likely arises when bosses don’t know what employees actually do to keep the place running — and of course, the devil is in the details.

Anyway, Marcus points to Andrew Orlowski’s protest at The Telegraph, “These ‘Igor, it’s alive!’ publicity stunts by the AI industry are becoming tedious”. For one thing, they get in the way of genuine concerns, like the fact that policymakers who have no real idea how AI works are establishing rules about it.

But, as he says, CEOs gotta CEO. And bureaucrats gotta crat.