Fei-Fei Li: World Models and the Multiverse

**Fei-Fei Li** (0:00)
That space, the 3D space, the space out there, the space in your mind's eye, the spatial intelligence that enable people to do so many things that's beyond language is a critical part of intelligence.

**Martin Casado** (0:15)
Fei-Fei leans over to me, she's like, you know what we're missing? I said, what are we missing? She said, we're missing a world, mom. I'm like, yes.

**Fei-Fei Li** (0:21)
We can actually create infinite universes. Some are for robots, some are for creativity, some are for socialization, some are for travel, some are for storytelling. It suddenly will enable us to live in a multiverse way. The imagination is boundless.

**Erik Torenberg** (0:40)
When we talk about AI today, the conversation is dominated by language, LLMs, tokens, prompts. But what if we're missing something more fundamental? Not words, but space, the physical world we move through in shape. My guests today think we are. Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer in modern AI, helped usher in the deep learning era by putting data at the center of machine learning. Now she's co-founder and CEO of World Labs, building world models, AI systems that perceive and act in 3D space. She's joined by a16z General partner, Martin Casado, computer scientist, repeat founder, and one of the first people Fei-Fei called when forming the company. Today, they explain why spatial intelligence is core to general intelligence, and why it's time to go beyond language. Let's get into it. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. Please note that a16z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Fei-Fei, thank you so much for joining us here today. Martin, why don't you briefly brag on behalf of Fei-Fei a little bit, and how would you summarize your contributions to AI for people unfamiliar?

**Martin Casado** (2:06)
Yeah, someone that doesn't need a lot of introduction, and she's done so many things that I can't fill in, so maybe I'll just do the ones that are appropriate to this. Of course, she was on the Twitter board, she was a Google executive. Founder and CEO of World Labs, but very, very importantly, we all know AI and we all talk about neural networks, and there's a number of people that focused on making those effective. But Fei-Fei really singularly brought in data to the equation, which now we're recognizing is actually probably the bigger problem, the more interesting one. And so she truly is the godmother of AI, as everybody calls her.

**Erik Torenberg** (2:34)
And Fei-Fei, why did you have to have Martin as the first investor?

**Fei-Fei Li** (2:36)
Well, first of all, I knew Martin for more than a decade.
I joined Stanford in 2009 as a young assistant professor, and Martin was finishing his PhD there. So I always know, and of course, Martin's advisor, Nick McKeown, was a good friend, and I always know Martin went on to become a very successful entrepreneur and very successful investor. So we see each other, we talk about things. But as I was formulating the idea of World Labs, I was looking for what I would call my unicorn investor. I don't know if that's a word, but that's how I think about this, who is not only obviously a very established and successful investor who can be with entrepreneurs on this journey through the ups and downs, who can be very insightful, who can bring the kind of knowledge, advice, resource. But I was also particularly looking for an intellectual partner. Because what we are doing at World Labs is very deep tech. We are trying to do something no one else has done. We know with a lot of conviction, it will change the world literally. But I need someone who is a computer scientist, who is a student of AI, understand product, market, customers, go to market. And just can be on the phone or in person with me every moment of the day as an intellectual partner. And here we are. We talk almost every single day. It is true.

**Erik Torenberg** (4:08)
Amazing.

**Martin Casado** (4:08)
Actually, the origin story of us first connecting is actually pretty interesting. So Fei-Fei has clearly been thinking about this idea for a very long time, like well before it started. So maybe years even. And she has this very deep intuition of what AI needs in order to basically navigate the world. But we were at one of Mark's fancy lunches and there's a bunch of AI people and everybody was so excited about LLMs. And it was talking about language. And I'd come to this independent conclusion just because I've actually done a lot of image investing, that wasn't the end of the story. And so Fei-Fei and I were at the end of this table, all these people talking about it. Fei-Fei leans over to me and she's like, you know what we're missing? I said, what are we missing? She said, we're missing a world model. And I'm like, yes. And it fell into place then because I'd been like thinking about stuff at a high level, but as she does, she just kind of perfectly articulated this. So she had a year's worth of thinking about this, had talked to people, et cetera. And so in some way, we kind of in our own crooked past had arrived at a very similar intuition. Hers was like way more filled out. Mine was just this kind of fancy thing. But then after that, we actually had a number of conversations where we both agreed that we were aligned on this kind of idea.