Odyssey CEO Oliver Cameron is 90% sure we live in a simulation | E2358
November 3, 2026 · 1 h 24 min
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DEBRIEFWritten and voiced by AI from the episode's audio
This Week in Startups opens with Jason Calacanis excited about GrokBot's explosive growth and Elon Musk's announcement of usage limits due to unsustainable costs. Jason shares his personal ROI from AI tools—spending $40K annually to generate $2M+ in value by automating seven full-time positions and accelerating workflows. The episode then pivots to Oliver Cameron, CEO of Odyssey, who demonstrates their world model technology by placing a simulated fruit fly brain in an AI-generated environment. Cameron reveals he's 90% certain we live in a simulation, sparking a fascinating discussion about simulation theory, the double-slit experiment, and the computational feasibility of simulating reality. The conversation covers Odyssey's business model (selling foundation models to robotics and autonomous vehicle companies), the limitations of visual-only learning, and how world models could eventually enable a billion robots. The show concludes with segments on data center politics, AI's impact on employment, Waymo's robotaxi superiority, and Google's new space-based data center prototype—suggesting that orbital infrastructure may be the inevitable solution to earthbound resistance.
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Today’s show:
Odyssey co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron builds simulated worlds for a living, so we asked him the obvious question: are we all living in one, right now? He says he’s 90% certain that, yes, we are.
To help make the case (and show off their world model technology), Oliver’s team dropped a simulated fruit fly brain into an AI world, that’s being rendered and created in real time. So far, on X, 6.2 million people have watched the virtual fly navigate an imaginary world.
On TWiST, we’re digging into how world models learn about physics, gravity, and causality just by watching videos, what make Odyssey-3 an ideal trainig ground for AI agents, and why a world model only renders the parts of the world that are currently being experienced.
It’s a peek inside the technology that may, one day, allow us to enslave people in The Matrix and turn them into batteries. Or train self-driving cars more effectively! One of those.
Plus: SpaceX throttles Grok Bot over unsustainably high costs, but Jason says it’s worth every penny. And will OpenAI’s suggested name change from data centers to “compute campuses,” and Meta’s efforts to improve El Paso, help turn around American attitudes? Or is blasting them into space the only remaining viable option?
Guest
Oliver Cameron on X: https://x.com/olivercameron
Odyssey: https://odyssey.systems/
Relevant Links
The fruit fly brain flying inside Odyssey-3 (6.2M views): https://x.com/odysseyml/status/2111589148146749616
Meet Odyssey-3, Odyssey's foundation world model: https://odyssey.systems/meet-odyssey-3
FlyWire: https://flywire.ai/
Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”: https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf
Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50-50 (Scientific American): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/
"Beyond Perception: Proposing Our Reality as an ASI Alignment Simulation" (Ali Eslami, IPI Letters): https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/article/view/350
The double-slit experiment explained (Royal Institution, Jim Al-Khalili): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ
“A Glitch in the Matrix” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au8eT79WUJ0
Elon Musk throttles Grok Bot limits over "unsustainably high" costs (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/elon-musk-throttles-grok-bot-limits-due-to-unsustainably-high-costs/
Elon's post: "The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116992258520064397
Jason's post: "