Top AI researchers say language is limiting. Here's the new kind of model they are building instead.

As significant investments flood into large-language models (LLMs) from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, a select group of AI researchers, including Fei-Fei Li and Yann LeCun, are venturing into creating 'world models.' These models differ from LLMs as they aim to replicate human cognition and decision-making processes, allowing AI to predict events based on mental models rather than just statistical data. Li emphasizes that the ability to think beyond language is what differentiates human intelligence, proposing that AI must adopt this model-based reasoning to achieve or surpass human-like intelligence.

"Language doesn't exist in nature," Li said on a recent episode of Andreessen Horowitz's a16z podcast. "Humans, not only do we survive, live, and work, but we build civilization beyond language."

Each of us uses models constantly. Every person in private life and in business instinctively uses models for decision making. The mental images in one's head about one's surroundings are models.

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