Critiques of World Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xing, Eric, Deng, Mingkai, Hou, Jinyu, Hu, Zhiting
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Xing, Eric
Deng, Mingkai
Hou, Jinyu
Hu, Zhiting
author_facet Xing, Eric
Deng, Mingkai
Hou, Jinyu
Hu, Zhiting
contents World Model, the supposed algorithmic surrogate of the real-world environment which biological agents experience with and act upon, has been an emerging topic in recent years because of the rising needs to develop virtual agents with artificial (general) intelligence. There has been much debate on what a world model really is, how to build it, how to use it, and how to evaluate it. In this essay, starting from the imagination in the famed Sci-Fi classic Dune, and drawing inspiration from the concept of "hypothetical thinking" in psychology literature, we offer critiques of several schools of thoughts on world modeling, and argue the primary goal of a world model to be simulating all actionable possibilities of the real world for purposeful reasoning and acting. Building on the critiques, we propose a new architecture for a general-purpose world model, based on hierarchical, multi-level, and mixed continuous/discrete representations, and a generative and self-supervision learning framework, with an outlook of a Physical, Agentic, and Nested (PAN) AGI system enabled by such a model.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_05169
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Critiques of World Models
Xing, Eric
Deng, Mingkai
Hou, Jinyu
Hu, Zhiting
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
World Model, the supposed algorithmic surrogate of the real-world environment which biological agents experience with and act upon, has been an emerging topic in recent years because of the rising needs to develop virtual agents with artificial (general) intelligence. There has been much debate on what a world model really is, how to build it, how to use it, and how to evaluate it. In this essay, starting from the imagination in the famed Sci-Fi classic Dune, and drawing inspiration from the concept of "hypothetical thinking" in psychology literature, we offer critiques of several schools of thoughts on world modeling, and argue the primary goal of a world model to be simulating all actionable possibilities of the real world for purposeful reasoning and acting. Building on the critiques, we propose a new architecture for a general-purpose world model, based on hierarchical, multi-level, and mixed continuous/discrete representations, and a generative and self-supervision learning framework, with an outlook of a Physical, Agentic, and Nested (PAN) AGI system enabled by such a model.
title Critiques of World Models
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05169