I hesitate to recast the discussion in a negative tone, but this doesn't sound right on technical terms.
Is World Labs' Atlas genuinely novel? Their demos do not seem to be better than the existing state of the art.
Fei Fei Li has been criticized even in the ImageNet days as a shower than a doer. Her roadshow past two years extolling "world model" in vague terms didn't show much insight, and her company's demo seems to merely rehash what has been available in the field for years. If you haven't seen the current SoTA in Gaussian splats, then World Labs' demos may seem cool, but they are mostly standard in the field now. If someone is more familiar with the inner workings of World Labs, I am happy to be corrected (but inner details wouldn't change the fact that demos are no better than SoTA).
I really had high hopes for World Labs, but I am quite saddened to realize that perhaps all this was just a financial maneuver and the detractors were right from the beginning.
source: I used to be in the downstream field: Gaussian spats for robotics. The exact field that World Labs' is supposed to help.
i'm quite happy with all the scientists and ml pioneers getting paid - but it seems like we've reached a point where a billion dollar is not a big amount anymore and that is just strange for me to accept. It used to be that being a unicorn is a big deal, now they buy companies without any products for billions ... Just leads me to believe that those at the top have just become unfathomable rich - be it individuals, vc companies or corporations.
To pay for WWII, the US had a 90% federal tax bracket that effectively capped yearly income. In the 1950s, a CEO could only earn the equivalent of 5mil a year in 2026 dollars.
That is why vacation destinations used to boom. Why people could take road trips because work wasn't understaffed. How we funded interstates and modern infrastructure. It's why the one parent household existed. CEO's don't underpay, understaff, or outsource when it doesn't personally make themselves richer.
This is what mcarthyism was really about. A handful of rich people calling any taxes that apply to them a form of communism. That group has basically won. They repealed the taxes and regulations that ended the great depression and now we are entering another depression. This new one will last until we vote to bring back the federal income tax policies and post-1929 financial regulations of the 1950s.
quanto · · focus · HN ↗
Is World Labs' Atlas genuinely novel? Their demos do not seem to be better than the existing state of the art.
Fei Fei Li has been criticized even in the ImageNet days as a shower than a doer. Her roadshow past two years extolling "world model" in vague terms didn't show much insight, and her company's demo seems to merely rehash what has been available in the field for years. If you haven't seen the current SoTA in Gaussian splats, then World Labs' demos may seem cool, but they are mostly standard in the field now. If someone is more familiar with the inner workings of World Labs, I am happy to be corrected (but inner details wouldn't change the fact that demos are no better than SoTA).
I really had high hopes for World Labs, but I am quite saddened to realize that perhaps all this was just a financial maneuver and the detractors were right from the beginning.
source: I used to be in the downstream field: Gaussian spats for robotics. The exact field that World Labs' is supposed to help.
sharts · · focus · HN ↗
jansport123 · · focus · HN ↗
roosterIllusi0n · · focus · HN ↗
This is what mcarthyism was really about. A handful of rich people calling any taxes that apply to them a form of communism. That group has basically won. They repealed the taxes and regulations that ended the great depression and now we are entering another depression. This new one will last until we vote to bring back the federal income tax policies and post-1929 financial regulations of the 1950s.