> Its easy to see what works in hindsight

Yes! Hence my comment about world models being where (ex-)"AI luminaries" go to die. They had a great idea and pushed it, advancing their career, but as you point out this does not provide even them with a better perspective on where things are going. When it comes to the next big thing they have no better chance than a fresh grad student has.

But simulation (in this round, world models) is how you get the current thing to perform 1% better. So they work on that, and because of their reputation loads of money and resources pours into it because they chose it ... and then the solution comes from a different place entirely.

Except things are changing too, and world models like Google and Meta and Mistral and ... are pursuing appear to be getting bypassed by the current tech. It's starting to look a lot like the "internal world model" of a transformer that you've shown 1 million youtube movies is better than a separate world model, probably because the resources they pour into their general chatbot models are still an order of magnitude above what they can pour into their world models.