Louis Castricato spent the better part of a decade working on the kind of AI that powers ChatGPT and Claude. Then he decided the interesting problems were somewhere else entirely.
The computer scientist, who built deep expertise in large language models and reinforcement learning from human feedback, launched Overworld (formerly Wayfarer Labs) with a straightforward thesis: the era of fundamental LLM breakthroughs is winding down, and the real action is shifting to what the industry calls “world models,” AI systems designed to interact with physical environments in real time rather than just generate text.
From text generation to physical simulation
“We basically have passed the point of doing real fundamental LLM research. Now it’s just applications.”
That’s Castricato explaining why he walked away from the LLM world. His argument isn’t that LLMs are useless. It’s that they’ve entered the “build apps on top” phase rather than the “discover new paradigms” phase.
