Comment by mjburgess

I'll have to read the JEPA article in more detail before commenting specifically on whether "world model" is appropriate. However procedural-action models have, in my view, a special place in the area of modelling the world.

While they may not be world models under my definition above, they are something like world-model-generating-models. They work like our sensory-motor system which itself builds "procedural proxy models" of the world -- and these become world models when they are cognised (, conceptualised, made abstract, made available for the imagination, etc.).

Contrast a very simple animal which can move a leaf around vs., a more complex one (eg., a mouse, etc.) which can imagine the leaf in various orientations. It's that capacity, esp. of mammals (, birds, etc.) to reify their sensory-motor "world-model-generating" capacity, eg., in imagination, which allows them to form world models in their heads. We require something like imagination in order to be able to hypotheticate a general model, form a hypothetical action, and try that action out.

I'm less concerned about making this distinct clear for casual observes in the case of robotics, because imv, competent acting in the world can lead to building world models. Whereas most other forms cannot.

What these robots require, to have world models in my view, would be firstly these sensory-motor models and then a reliable way of 1) acquiring new SM mdoels live (ie., learning motor techniques); and 2) reporting on what they have learned in a reasoning/cognitive context.

Robotics is just at stage0 here, the very basics of making a sensory-motor connection.