Fei-Fei Li on Spatial Intelligence and Robotics
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What is spatial intelligence and what does World Labs aim to build?
We are building the next frontier of AI, which is what we call spatial intelligence.
At Cynics, we are developing what we call a real-to-sim-to-real pipeline. We can replace all the data, all the evaluation we need in the real environment by using the data that can generate at a scalable way in our digital world.
Think about human intelligence. We do a lot of simulations in our head. You know why? There's a very important role simulation plays that real-world data doesn't play, which is counterfactual reasoning.
What we are building is a consistent world. Consistency both over space, over time, over different viewpoints, and over different types of interactions. My North Star is I want the robotic work.
The world we live in can be multiverse, that we create technology to allow people, builders, developers to act within different spaces.
Do you believe we'll ever be able to build robots that have the power efficiency of a human being? How far away are we from this? Is this like five years or this is like never?
The TLDR is...
Language models transformed how AI understands words. The next frontier is teaching AI to understand and act within the physical world. Following World Lab's acquisition of Cinex, Martin Cassaro sits down with Fei-Fei Li and Yunzhu Li to unpack the vision behind the deal. They discuss spatial intelligence, world models, simulation, and why solving robotics will require a new generation of AI built for three-dimensional reasoning, not just language.
All right, well, it's great to have you both here. So Fei-Fei, for the listeners that may not have the background, maybe you can give an overview of what World Labs does.
Yeah, well, WordLab is a two-year-old startup. I think we should just recognize it's a frontier model lab. We are building the next frontier of AI, which is what we call spatial intelligence. And spatial intelligence is about creating AI that has the ability to generate, understand, reason with, and interact with spaces, whether it's physical or virtual. And of course, a means to an end towards spatial intelligence is building large world models. And that's what World Labs is mostly focused on.
So you've been saying this since the very beginning, which is the machine's ability to perceive and reason about spaces and act on spaces. But I always had the assumption that the acting on spaces was some long-distance shooter thing, but now you're acquiring a robotics company. And so maybe talk a little bit about the timeliness of this and the intentions.
Yeah. So first of all, it doesn't just take robotics to act within spaces or to interact, right? I mean, look at the creative field, whether it's VFX or gaming or design, many use cases, you can create and act within virtual spaces. And World App's thesis has always been that the world we live in can be multiverse, that we create technology to allow people, builders, developers to act within different spaces. Having said that, the ability to act within the physical space is one of the most exciting and most profoundly important capability of the future AI world. So robotics is very much that. So WordLab has always believed that robotics is an important application as well as use case of spatial intelligence and world modeling.
So by joining force with inviting Cynics and Cynics team to World Labs is part of our long-term vision and mission. We've always committed to that.
Amazing. So Yunxiu, you're the co-founder of Cynics. So maybe provide everyone with a quick overview of your background and what Cynics does.
Yeah, so I'm Yunzhu. So I'm currently co-founder of Cynics and also assistant professor at Columbia University. So my research started from my PhD at MIT and then postdoc with Fei-Fei. Really? Yes. That's great.
The world is small.
The world is small. Throughout my career, my goal has been very simple, trying to help the robots better perceive and interact with the physical world. So I'm a very practical person. I want my robot to work in a real physical environment. So for Cynics, the unique opportunity we see is that there has been a lot of bottlenecks.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is spatial intelligence and what does World Labs aim to build?
0:00–8:55
2
Why did World Labs acquire SceniX and what synergies were they seeking?
8:55–21:30
3
What is Cynics’ real-to-sim-to-real pipeline and how does dense reconstruction work?
21:30–33:27
4
How does Marble create geometrically consistent 3D worlds for robotics?
33:27–42:55
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The a16z Show
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