The Machines That Dream in Physics
The hottest idea in AI isn't a large language model. It's a machine that can close its eyes, imagine what happens next—and be right.
In the spring of 2026, Yann LeCun—Turing Award winner, one of the three "godfathers" of deep learning—stood on a stage in Paris, picked up a pen, and balanced it on its tip. Then he asked the room a question a four-year-old could answer.
"What happens if I let go?"
Every toddler knows. The pen falls. They can't write the equations for it, but they know, deep in their bones, the way you know a dropped mug is bad news before it hits the tile. A large language model, LeCun pointed out, doesn't know it the same way. Ask GPT-5 and it will produce a gorgeous paragraph about the pen's descent—torque, gravity, the clatter on the floor. But it isn't reasoning about the world. It's doing...
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