We’ve all been astonished at how chatbots seem to understand the world. But what if they were truly connect to the real world? What if the dataset behind the chat interface was physical reality itself, captured in real time by interpreting the input of billions of sensors sprinkled around the globe? That’s the idea behind Archetype AI, an ambitious startup launching today. As cofounder and CEO Ivan Poupyrev puts it, “Think of ChatGPT, but for physical reality.”
Archetype’s foundational model is called Newton. Yes, they know about Apple’s long-lamented handheld device killed by Steve Jobs in 1997, and no, they don’t seem to care. The new Newton is designed to process data from sensors of all kinds and answer questions or provide charts or even computer code to report what’s happening in the world. For Poupyrev himself, Archetype is fulfillment of a long-held belief that the digital world can provide a means of deep engagement with the physical one. Though I didn’t know it at the time, I had my own hand in this: Soviet-born Poupyrev’s fascination for manipulating the world through tech was triggered in part by my book Hackers, which had been slipped to his father during a visit to China. “The idea that things could be hacked and their nature could be changed by inventing new technology inspired me for the rest of my life,” he tweeted about the book in 2020. He also honed his English by reading and rereading the book. You’re welcome.
Poupyrev’s journey after he left the Soviet Union and became a computer scientist included stints at Sony, Disney, and, until last March, Google’s ATAP division. That’s where he led a team working on Soli, a project that built tiny radar devices into wearable gadgets to allow them to respond to a person’s gestures and movements. The demos were impressive, but that approach had limits. “Analyzing sensors was really hard. You had read them by hand,” he says. When LLMs appeared, Poupyrev and colleagues realized that with modifications they could make sensor data more powerful by providing a way for humans to easily explore and monitor data collected across vast swaths of time and space. Instead of a large language model it would be a large behavior model. “We were excited to see how they can work with real-time data from the physical world,” he says. They were particularly excited to do it outside of Google, free of the constraints of working within a giant organization. In March last year, Poupyrev and eventually four others left to start Archetype, now funded by a $13 million seed round of investment funding.
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