Alexandre LeBrun, CEO of Yann LeCun's "world model" startup AMI Labs, has publicly rejected the terms "AGI" and "superintelligence," arguing they lack meaningful definitions and are simply industry buzzwords that keep shifting. His comments, made in a TechCrunch interview while attending a machine learning conference in Seoul, stand out against a wider AI industry trend of adopting increasingly grandiose labels for their technology, positioning AMI Labs' approach as more grounded and practical.

LeBrun explained that AMI Labs is developing "world models," which incorporate physics to predict how the real world will behave, unlike large language models that merely predict the next word of text. He argued the two approaches are complementary rather than competing, with LLMs remaining best for language tasks while world models provide physical context and safety awareness, particularly for robotics, which he says currently operate with "no brain" beyond fixed, static routines. AMI Labs remains pre-product but is seeking industrial partners in robotics, manufacturing and electronics, and LeBrun also pointed to healthcare as a future application, noting current AI covers only around 1% of medical needs since it lacks real-world clinical experience.