The “Everything Is Possible World Model”: How can a vague concept support the $10 billion financing narrative?
Author: Motion Detective BeatingOriginal title: Everything Is Possible World Model The term World Model is almost being sold out by investors. Li Feifei's World Labs completed financing of 1 billion US dollars in February this year, with a valuation of 5 billion US dollars. A year ago, it was only valued at 1 billion dollars. Yang Likun's new company, AMI Labs, raised around a billion dollars in seed round, setting the record for the largest seed round in the history of European AI startups. There were 25 cases of financing related to the World Model in the first quarter in China. Some companies took two consecutive rounds of 2.5 billion dollars in a month, and the valuation jumped from 5 billion to 10 billion dollars. What's even more surprising is that don't look at investor FOMO like this. Currently, the entire AI industry has yet to agree on what the four words “world model” actually mean. It's a word that hasn't even been defined, and it's already worth tens of billions. Every day they shouted slogans to find an anti-consensus, and in the end, they invested their money in the absence of consensus, and then called it an outlet. However, I recently heard from a few big VC investors that they could clearly see the bubble in this direction themselves, and it wasn't that no one had taken a picture of the table during the internal rehearsal session and discussed it back and forth. The conclusion was that they still had to vote. If you don't vote, next year's LP will ask you why you missed the world model; if you vote, even if you make a mistake in the end, it will be the whole industry's fault. However, when the money is hot enough, it is time to ask an impolite question. Since no one can say exactly what it is, what exactly is everyone voting for? First of all, let's be fair about the process. There was something really about this concept. In 2018, two researchers published a paper titled “World Models.” They let AI create a dream for themselves in a racing game. First, master the car in the dream, and then run back in the game. At the time, ChatGPT didn't exist, and this paper was only circulating in a small circle of researchers. Yang Likun has actually been adhering to this research direction for a long time. In the years when all of Silicon Valley bet money on the big language model, he repeatedly reiterated his view that by predicting the next word, machines would never be able to touch human intelligence, so it must be made to understand the physical world. I've been saying this for almost ten years, but the wind hasn't blown this way for him. People like him didn't turn away after hearing the wind; in their perception, there really is something about the world model. However, when “something really does” enter the venture capital industry, it usually has to go through a process first. This process will process a research direction into a term that can be wholesale. The venture capital community's favorite has never been a technical concept; it's the franchisability of a technical concept. The world model is a child of choice in this regard. It is more technological than the “metaverse,” sexier than “spatial intelligence,” broader than “embodied intelligence,” and fresher than “multi-modal.” Most importantly, it's very difficult to falsify. In BP, the harder it is to prove falsification, the more valuable it is, because not being able to falsify means that new investors can be found to take over in the next round. What the story earns is money that cannot be falsified. The world model was folded, and it had the current splendor. If you make a game, say you are a model of the world; if you make a short story, you say you are a model of the world; if you make a video tool, you say you are a model of the world; if you make a simulation robot, you say you are a model of the world. Further on, those who make advertising materials, educational courseware, metaphysics fortune-telling, and virtual people to chat with will be able to enter the world model circle as long as they dare to blow it. Earlier, at an event, I heard investors share in a round table. Each field of medicine, finance, and law can be viewed as an independent world. According to this usage, my car repair master downstairs also has a world model in his mind. It specifically predicts when the Third Ring Road will be blocked. The accuracy rate is higher than most assisted drivers I've ever used. Not long ago, I also saw a robotics company announce that it is building a model of the industrial world and a model of the home world at the same time. I realized that the world used to be countable terms; they can be sold individually. It's not that no one has anticipated this grand event; the identity of the person who anticipated it is quite special. In March of this year, on the day AMI Labs funded that billion dollars, the company's CEO told the media that I predict “world model” will be the next buzzword. Within six months, every company will call itself World Model to finance. He was right. The only thing that wasn't accurate was the time; it didn't take six months at all. Habitual narratives Chasing narratives has long been a habitual act of investors and entrepreneurs. On May 10, 2015, a listed company whose main business is floor tiles and real estate issued an announcement saying that it wants to become the first internet finance company in China, it wants to change its name to “Pitumpi”, and the English name is directly registered as P2P Financial Information Ser...
