Sora’s Surreal Physics
We recorded 10 claims from this post. 3 were checked against evidence. 7 can’t be checked. 5 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (10)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Artists are presumably getting really screwed here.”
Our reading: Artists are probably being badly harmed by the way Sora was trained.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“I would not at all be surprised if there also had been lots of training on YouTube visited, and various copyrighted materials.”
Our reading: Sora may well have been trained on lots of YouTube video and various copyrighted materials.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“In my view, these claims — about AGI and world models — are hyperbolic, and unlikely to be true.”
Our reading: Claims that Sora amounts to AGI, vindicates scaling laws, or constitutes a world model are hyperbolic and unlikely to be true.
No horizon
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Conditional forecast
“We will, I am certain, see more systemic glitches as more people have access.”
Our reading: As more people gain access to Sora, more systemic glitches will be found.
Settled before its deadline Evidence as of
Only if: as more people get access
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“And importantly, I predict that many will be hard to remedy.”
Our reading: Many of Sora's physics glitches will be hard to fix.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Public development disclosures provide little detail about targeted repair effort.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“More data won’t solve that problem.”
Our reading: More training data will not solve Sora's hallucination-like physics glitches.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: The research experiments test models other than OpenAI's Sora and do not establish what all larger datasets could achieve [e1, e2].
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“If a system can’t at all handle with the permanence of objects, I am not sure we should even call it a world model at all.”
Our reading: If a system can't handle the permanence of objects at all, Marcus is not sure it should even be called a world model.
No horizon
Only if: if a system can't at all handle the permanence of objects
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Sora is fantastic, but it is akin to morphing and splicing, rather than a path to the physical reasoning we would need for AGI. It is a model of how images change over time, not a model of what entities do in the world.”
Our reading: Sora is akin to morphing and splicing of images, not a path to the physical reasoning needed for AGI.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“As a technology for video artists that’s fine, if they choose to use it; the occasional surrealism may even be an advantage for some purposes (like music videos).”
Our reading: As a technology for video artists Sora is fine if they choose to use it, and its occasional surrealism may even be an advantage for some purposes such as music videos.
No horizon
Qualifier: if they choose to use it
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“As a solution to artificial general intelligence, though, I see it as a distraction.”
Our reading: In Marcus's view, Sora is a distraction as a solution to artificial general intelligence.
No horizon
Qualifier: I see it as
Held from this post (5)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Sora, like other generative AI systems, has no way to encode and guarantee constraints such as truthfulness or obeying physics.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently