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  • 🤯 Traverse into Images in Your Gallery, Royal Designers, False Positives and more

🤯 Traverse into Images in Your Gallery, Royal Designers, False Positives and more

Turning a static image into a 3D place. It's possible now.

Author

Charbel Zeaiter
December 04, 2024

Well, World Labs has shared more about their much teased product, a first step towards spatial intelligence: an AI system that generates 3D worlds from a single image. 🤯

The Royals have appointed 7 Designers (I’m not one of them), and I'm a fan of Skeptoptimism – Thinking Slow, Acting Fast (although I often do this in reverse).

Lots to look at today, happy reading.

Yours in Wonder,
Charbel
Founder of Velvet Onion, Faster Zebra and more to come …

Today’s Highlights

  • AI: You can Traverse Into Static Images: World Labs Realises 3D Experiences

  • Design: London Declared Seven Royal Designers for Industry

  • Science & Tech: 12-Pound Balloon Robots for Disaster Mapping

  • Founding: Capital doesn’t Produce Disruptive Startups: Extraordinary Founders Do

  • Product: Keep Running Tests Until Positive Outcome Appears: A Trappy Approach that leads to False Hopes

  • Today’s AI image: Every Image is a Portal

  • Quote for the day: Some Darwinian Wisdom

AI

You can Traverse Into Static Images: World Labs Realises 3D Experiences

Fei-Fei Li, often dubbed the "Godmother of AI," has just unveiled the first big project from her startup, World Labs. It’s a groundbreaking AI system that can take any image and turn it into a fully interactive 3D environment, all navigable in real-time through a web browser.

All You Need To Know

This system doesn’t just replicate what’s visible in an image; it crafts entire 3D worlds, keeping everything seamless as users explore.

With the usual keyboard and mouse controls, users can roam and look around the generated spaces, but they’re not stuck in one spot — it’s a whole new level of freedom.

Plus, it’s got all the bells and whistles like real-time camera effects (think depth-of-field and dolly zoom), plus sliders to tweak lighting and animations for that perfect cinematic touch.

The system works with both photos and AI-generated imagery, so creators can mash it up with everything from text-to-image tools to iconic artworks.

Why is this a big deal?

World Labs’ innovation in making actual explorable 3D spaces from images opens up a wealth of new opportunities for games, movies, virtual experiences, and creative workflows. Soon enough, creating expansive virtual worlds might be as easy as whipping up a quick image.

Design

London Declared Seven Royal Designers for Industry

Seven new designers have been inducted into the prestigious Royal Designers for Industry (RDI). The group, limited to just 200 members at any time, represents the pinnacle of design excellence.

Among the new inductees:

  • Shona Heath: Oscar-winning production designer for Poor Things, celebrated for her collaborations with top fashion brands and Tim Walker.

  • Michael Bierut: Renowned Pentagram partner.

  • Clary Salandy: Costume designer and cultural figure in the Notting Hill Carnival.

  • Tom Stuart-Smith: Landscape architect known for museum gardens and green spaces promoting sustainability.

  • Lucy Musgrave: Urban designer behind London's Bond Street, focusing on creating long-lasting, inclusive public spaces.

  • Michael Levine: Theatrical set and costume designer.

  • Julia Lohmann: Sustainability leader exploring seaweed’s design potential.

The Royal Society for Arts (RSA) oversees these awards, with RDI recipients joining design legends like Quentin Blake and Tim Berners-Lee. Charlie Paton, of the Association of RDIs, celebrated how the diverse disciplines of the new inductees highlight design’s vital role in shaping our world.

Science & Tech

12-Pound Balloon Robots for Disaster Mapping

Near Space Labs, a US-based startup, has launched 12-pound balloon robots to capture ultra-detailed aerial imagery of the US.

These autonomous bots, equipped with AI-powered robots called Swifts, fly at 60,000 to 85,000 feet — much higher than commercial planes, but below Earth-observing satellites.

Jaw-Dropping Image Resolution

The images these balloons capture boast a 7 cm (2.76-inch) resolution per pixel. This rivals or even beats traditional aerial surveys done by planes and helicopters, making them perfect for insurance, urban planning, and disaster response.

Massive Coverage in One Flight

Each Swift robot can cover 1,000 square kilometres in a single flight—about the size of New York City's five boroughs! A single balloon captures more data than 800,000 drones.

Addressing Insurance Gaps

With extreme weather wreaking havoc across the US, Near Space Labs aims to provide precise, up-to-date imagery to help insurers assess risks and property damage faster.

The startup’s tech promises to map disaster zones in hours rather than weeks.

Calculatively, this technology could be a game-changer for industries dealing with climate-related risks and urban development.

Founding

Capital doesn’t Produce Disruptive Startups: Extraordinary Founders Do

1. The Messy Web of Modern Challenges

Life’s complexity makes it tough to pinpoint what drives outcomes.

Every problem links to another: fix crime by fixing families, but first fix welfare, and so on—it’s a tangled Rubik’s Cube of societal woes.

Progress needs clear, actionable levers, but those are buried in interconnected chaos.

2. What’s Stopping Startups from Thriving?

The million-dollar question: Why aren’t there 10x more stellar startups? Let’s break it down:

  • Capital Shortage? Nah, there’s heaps of cash floating around. The issue lies in who gets funded—bias and poor frameworks misallocate resources.

  • Idea Drought? Not quite. Exceptional founders create markets, riding trends and outsmarting TAM (total addressable market) limitations.

  • Founder Scarcity? Exceptional founders—intelligent, passionate, gutsy—are rare. Courage, after all, is scarcer than genius.

3. What Makes Exceptional Founders So Exceptional?

  • Resilience: Thriving means taking hits—founders often face rejection, doubt, and “you’re mad” vibes.

  • Courage: Deviating from the norm takes guts; the bold endure where others fold.

  • Customer Obsession: The Bezos principle—relentless focus on customer needs beats clever ideas alone.

  • Risk Appetite: Fearless ambition often grows from financial security or sheer grit, but today’s cultures coddle comfort over risk. 

The Takeaway

Startups thrive when gutsy, resourceful founders get room to grow. It’s not about finding ideas or capital; it’s about unlocking exceptional people. Tackling this requires cultural shifts, better capital allocation, and fostering a daring spirit of risk-taking.

Think of it like a startup itself—success comes from piecing together all the messy bits of the puzzle into something extraordinary.

Product

Keep Running Tests Until Positive Outcome Appears: A Trappy Approach that leads to False Hopes

Experiments sometimes yield false positives—like a wonky coin flip that’s declared “biased.”

Repeating a test repeatedly increases the likelihood of stumbling on a false positive. That’s why regulators like the FDA require pre-registering all results, not just the ones that look good.

The Marketer’s Trap: Unintentional p-Hacking

Stopping tests early or lowering confidence thresholds (like 85% instead of 95%) makes you prone to over-interpreting random fluctuations as success.

Running lots of tests and celebrating the “successful” ones without accounting for false positives? You’re essentially flipping biased coins.

Why Incremental Wins Don't Add Up

String together enough minor “improvements” from A/B tests, and you'll expect monumental gains over time. Yet your overall metrics stay flat. Why? Most of those “improvements” were false positives.

Smarter Testing: Learn, Don’t Just Guess

  • Form hypotheses: Don’t just toss spaghetti at the wall. Test theories like, “Visitors on mobile prefer high-contrast visuals.”

  • Focus on big shifts: Chase major, double-digit changes—not marginal tweaks that are more likely random noise.

  • Test again: If you’ve struck gold, repeat the test to confirm it’s real. If the result fades, it wasn’t gold—just pyrite.

Validated Learning: A Method to the Madness

Failed tests? Great! They teach you what doesn’t work and refine your understanding of your audience.

Positive results? Push further—test even bolder implementations of your theory to ensure it’s not a fluke.

Bottom Line

Don’t let excitement for quick wins cloud your judgment. Methodical, hypothesis-driven testing keeps you honest and delivers sustainable results. As they say, “You do want the truth… don’t you?”

Today’s AI Image

Every Image is a Portal

Source - DALL-E

Quote of the Day

Some Darwinian Wisdom

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

Charles Darwin

What we’re working on

Velvet Onion & Friends

We’re in the process of rebranding Velvet Onion & Friends. Why? It’s an important stage in our evolution, and deepens the link between agency, product & education.

We’re at the final stages of planning for our pilot program. Working name is “99 Problems But A Pitch Ain’t One;” cute for internal projects, not sure it’s the name. Coming soon!

🧞Your wish is my command

Charbel

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