Iris van Rooij
Cognitive Scientist
Professor of computational cognitive science at Radboud University who published a formal proof that human-level artificial general intelligence is computationally intractable — calling the industry’s pursuit of it “a fool’s errand.”
In her words
Chasing this goal is a fool’s errand, and a waste of humanity’s resources.
Biography
Iris van Rooij is a professor of computational cognitive science at the Donders Institute, Radboud University in the Netherlands, and a leading theorist of what computation can and cannot explain about the mind. Her scholarship focuses on “intractability” — the mathematical limits on what any physical computer could ever calculate in reasonable time.
A proof against AGI inevitability
In the 2024 paper “Reclaiming AI as a Theoretical Tool for Cognitive Science” (Computational Brain & Behavior), van Rooij and co-authors — including Olivia Guest — argue that building a system with genuine human-like cognition is not merely hard but formally intractable. Any AI produced in the near term, they conclude, is “at best a decoy” that resembles cognition without instantiating it. She frames the popular narrative of imminent AGI as an article of faith rather than a scientific finding.
Some argue that AGI is possible in principle... But principle isn’t enough to make it actually doable. Our paper explains why chasing this goal is a fool’s errand.
Van Rooij’s critique is aimed less at working AI tools than at the marketing that surrounds them — the claim that scaling current methods leads inexorably to machine minds. In that, she joins a lineage of formal-limits skeptics and shares intellectual ground with critics like Gary Marcus and Emily M. Bender.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/iris-van-rooij