Alphabet's Alpha Bet

A couple of months ago, Demis Hassabis indicated what he is more focused on these days:

World models are the thing I’m mostly spending my research time on. You probably saw SIMA 2 come out just a couple of days ago. I sometimes call it SIMA playing in the mind of Genie. These things fascinate me, and I think they will be critical components in getting to AGI.

I suspect over the course of 2026, we will hear a lot more about world model from Alphabet, and other frontier labs.

What exactly is a “world model”? A world model is basically an internal simulation of how the physical environment works. Just as humans can mentally imagine what will happen if they drop a glass on a concrete floor (it will shatter) versus a carpet (it might bounce), a world model allows an AI to predict the future state of the world based on its current state and a proposed action.

A recent paper by Google DeepMind hints that it is likely possible to accelerate building such world models. I will discuss the paper and some implications behind the paywall.

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