Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

blog.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 347 posts

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#151

Post by binsquare »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #128
binsquare wrote: post #124

It's ability to simulate physics intact is actually a huge breakthrough. I can't even fathom what it would be like for the future of simulation and physical world when it gets far more accurate and realistic.

Ironically the physics are kind of my biggest criticism. They call these "world models", but I think it's more accurate to call them "video game models" because they employ "video game physics" rather than real world physics, among other things This is most evident in the way things collide.

It's getting better staggeringly fast, just a year ago I wouldn't expect it to be at even video game physics level so quickly.

If there is a possibility where it continue to improve at a similar rate with llms. A way to simulate fluid dynamics or structural dynamics with reasonable accuracy and speed can unlock much faster pace of innovation in the physical world. (And validated with rigorous scientific methods)

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#152

Post by switchbak »

TacoCommander wrote: post #105
krunck wrote: post #46

The more of this I see the more I want to spend time away from screens and doing those things I love to do in the real world.

After a lifetime career in tech, I want to turn it all off.

Seriously though. These cute distractions have turned into world and culture eating monsters.

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#154

Post by switchbak »

moomoo11 wrote: post #108
krunck wrote: post #46

The more of this I see the more I want to spend time away from screens and doing those things I love to do in the real world.

I think this would be good for the people living in overcrowded, polluted and dirty cities in the world (let's be honest, they actually exist regardless of how that happened or why). Maybe they can unplug from 500+ AQI pollution and spend time with their loved ones and friends in a simulated clean world? Imagine working for 10-12 hours a day, and you come home to a pod (and a building could house thousands of pods, p…

Hook it up to an always-on fle*light, and I'm sure you'd have millions of paying customers.

Except you'll never have to leave your pod. Extract the $$ from their attention all day, then sell them manufactured virtual happiness all night. It's just a more streamlined version of how many people live right now.

I'll be running away from that hellscape, thanks.

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#155

Post by pedalpete »

This is what we were building in 2018 with Ayvri, starting from 3d tiles with the aim of building a real-world view by using AI to essentailly re-paint and add detail to what was essentially a high-resolution and faster loading Google Earth (for outside cities, we didn't have building data).

We saw a very diverse group of users, the common uses was paragliders, gliders, and pilots who wanted to view their or other peoples flights. Ultramarathons, mountain bike and some road-races where it provided an interactive way to visualize the course from any angle and distance. Transportation infrastructure to display train routes to be built. The list goes on.

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#156

Post by _zagj »

observationist wrote: post #26
sy26 wrote: post #10

I have been confused for a long time why FB is not motivated enough to invest in world models, it IS the key to unblock their "metaverse" vision. And instead they let go Yann LeCun.

LeCun wasn't producing results. He was obstinate and insistent on his own theories and ideas which weren't, and possibly aren't, going anywhere. He refused to engage with LLMs and compete in the market that exists, and spent all his effort and energy on unproven ideas and research, which split the company's mission and competitiveness. They lost their place as one of the top 4 AI companies, and are now a full generat…

This sounds similar to the arc of Carpathy, who also managed to preserve his reputation despite sending Tesla down a FSD deadend and missing the initial LLM boat.

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#157

Post by sfn42 »

saberience wrote: post #35
ofrzeta wrote: post #22

I don't know ... it's impressive and all but the result always looks kind of dead.

This reminds me of the comments by programmers roughly two years ago: "Sure it can write a single function but the code is terrible when it tries to write a whole class..."

You say that as if those programmers aren't still right

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#158

Post by slashdave »

2bitencryption wrote: post #111
slashdave wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a video model, not a world model. Start learning on this, and cascading errors will inevitably creep into all downstream products. You cannot invent data.

Given that the video is fully interactive and lets you move around (in a “world” if you will) I don’t think it’s a stretch to call it a world model. It must have at least some notion of physics, cause and effect, etc etc in order to achieve what it does.

No, it actually needs none of that.

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#159

Post by whalee »

phailhaus wrote: post #27

I have no idea why Google is wasting their time with this. Trying to hallucinate an entire world is a dead-end. There will never be enough predictability in the output for it to be cohesive in any meaningful way, by design. Why are they not training models to help write games instead? You wouldn't have to worry about permanence and consistency at all, since they would be enforced by the code, like all games today. Lo…

This was a common argument against LLMs, that the space of possible next tokens is so vast that eventually a long enough sequence will necessarily decay into nonsense, or at least that compounding error will have the same effect.

Problem is, that's not what we've observed to happen as these models get better. In reality there is some metaphysical coarse-grained substrate of physics/semantics/whatever[1] which these models can apparently construct for themselves in pursuit of ~whatever~ goal they're after.

The initially stated position, and your position: "trying to hallucinate an entire world is a dead-end", is a sort of maximally-pessimistic 'the universe is maximally-irreducible' claim.

The truth is much much more complicated.

[1] https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2512.03750

Re: Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

#160

Post by abraxas »

avaer wrote: post #63
in-silico wrote: post #52

Everyone here seems too caught up in the idea that Genie is the product, and that its purpose is to be a video game, movie, or VR environment. That is not the goal. The purpose of world models like Genie is to be the "imagination" of next-generation AI and robotics systems: a way for them to simulate the outcomes of potential actions in order to inform decisions.

Soft disagree; if you wanted imagination you don't need to make a video model. You probably don't need to decode the latents at all. That seems pretty far from information-theoretic optimality, the kind that you want in a good+fast AI model making decisions. The whole reason for LLMs inferencing human-processable text, and "world models" inferencing human-interactive video, is precisely so that humans can connect in…

> if you wanted imagination you don't need to make a video model. You probably don't need to decode the latents at all.

Soft disagree. What is the purpose of that imagination if not to map it to actual real world outfcomes. For this to compare them to the real world and possibly backpropagate through them you'll need video frames.

Post reply on HN