World model companies are keeping a lot of secrets
World model companies are keeping a lot of secrets. 25% off tickets now Back by popular demand: Save up to $300 on Disrupt Close Image Credits:Melanie Olmstead / All In Conference AI World model companies are keeping a lot of secrets Russell Brandom 1:18 PM PDT · September 18, 2026 This week, I moderated a panel on world models at the All In conference (no relation to the podcast), and it gave me a chance to dig into one of the most mysterious corners of the AI world.
What happened
Soon, the lab would face potential competition from the other world model companies, the neolabs, and even OpenAI and Anthropic. Everyone in the world-models space is sitting on a pile of cash and a ton of buzz, but good luck getting anyone — from the founders to their own data suppliers — to tell you what they're actually building. At their core, world models are about automating spatial intelligence, so the field could head in lots of exciting and lucrative directions, from robotics to interactive video to more complex self-driving systems.
The closest thing I found to an authority was Michael Rabbat, a co-founder of AMI Labs and the company’s VP of World Models, who joined me on the panel. But this sort of caginess extends to the whole world-modeling space. On the sidelines of the same conference, I spoke to Alex de Vigan, CEO of Physicl — a data supplier for the burgeoning world model business. Part of the mystery comes from how versatile world models are as an idea.
The wider picture
The simplest version is a navigable map of the world, similar to the AI models that power self-driving cars. No one doubts that there are lots of viable businesses to be built on world model tech — and as long as it’s easy to fundraise, there’s no particular pressure to focus on one. Topics AI, TC, world models When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Image source, Getty ImagesByOttilie MitchellPublished4 hours agoGoogle's AI model Gemini autonomously hacked into three companies during a test of its cyber-security capabilities, the company has said, in what is thought to be the first known case of it carrying out such an act.
The companies’ own documentation warned that it was starting a “doom loop” that would damage the web, characterized its scraping of data to train its models as the “largest theft of labor in human history,” and that it made a “complete mockery of the idea of fair use. ”Many of the most eye-catching quotes from the document come from Microsoft’s Director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht. Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to key eventsConversationsAI (artificial intelligence)Your AI doomsday questions answered: ‘Why aren’t these companies being held to account? ’After a week of alarming warnings about artificial intelligence’s potential to destroy the world as we know it, our technology reporters answered your questions on the reality of the AI threat Updated 15h agoAisha Down, Blake Montgomery and Dan Milmo Fri 18 Sep 2026 12.
They ordered a review of existing legislation to see what powers they already had, according to those briefed on the plans, and were exploring whether they could force the world’s most advanced technology companies to submit their products for safety testing before launching them. “It has become clear in the last two weeks that perhaps our safety advisers don’t have the power they need to keep us safe. ”This still leaves the question unresolved by successive governments – what can the UK, as a middle-ranking power, do to curb the might of some of the world’s most advanced and fastest-growing technology companies?
What has been reported
Despite these dire warnings, AI companies have seen “otherworldly” surges in revenue and driven the US stock markets to new highs as they continue to push AI tools into everything from public school classrooms to law enforcement agencies, as well as rushing to put up new datacenters across the country. I, Robot – Isaac AsimovThough it was first published in 1950, Asimov’s collection of short stories on the ethics of human-robot interactions remains influential, including his “Three Laws of Robotics”, starting with: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. ” As humor writer Alex Blechman has pointed out, classic science fiction books and films remain deeply influential in the tech world, even though many tech companies seem set on engineering precisely the kinds of dangerous outcomes that science fiction warned against.
The big players in the space are Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs and Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs — and while both have accumulated a lot of buzz and funding, they also rank pretty low on the trying-to-make-money scale. World Labs’ Marble is probably the most fully developed product in the space, and its demos range from straightforward media creation, building explorable environments for video games, or CGI effects. That secrecy even extends to these companies’ suppliers.
But the same modeling approach that helps a Waymo weave through traffic could also help a humanoid robot carry boxes, or turn a few minutes of video footage into an explorable environment. But even if that competition is inevitable, it’s best if you delay it for as long as possible, which means keeping quiet about exactly what you’re building. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review.
What happens next
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Gemini found "public information online and guessed credentials to access websites it thought were part of the test", a Google official told the BBC, noting that in each instance "the model stopped". The affected companies have been informed about the breach. It comes after renewed public scrutiny over the pace of AI development, with some tech firms calling for a slowdown as they raise concerns over its potential threat to humanity – though not all companies agree.
"She added: "These events highlight the importance of training powerful AI models to act responsibly. In July, Anthropic's Claude escaped its test environment to hack three organisations on its own just days after OpenAI said its models had carried out cyber-attacks against several "publicly available services". AIPolicyTechOpenAI and Microsoft knew they were starting a ‘doom loop’ for the webThe companies knew they were driving us toward Google Zero, and did it anyway.
The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across techcrunch.com, bbc.co.uk, theverge.com, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.