RS Glossary
World Model
A world model is a representation — learned from experience or built by hand — that a system uses to predict how an environment may change and how its own actions may affect future states.
- Review state
- Reviewed in POC
- Freshness
- Current
- Version
- 3
- World Model
- World Models
Remember it this wayThe system acts on its model of the world, not the world directly.
In plain language
The model captures selected regularities about objects, actors, dynamics, or consequences so an AI system can simulate possibilities or plan beyond the immediate input.
Why it matters
Planning depends on the representation matching the relevant environment. Missing rules, changing conditions, or mistaken identity can produce confident but unsafe action.
Example
A robot uses a learned representation of movement and object interaction to predict which route and action sequence is likely to reach a target safely.
Common misconception
A world model is not a complete or objective copy of the world and does not establish common sense or humanlike understanding.
Related terms
Sources
- Ha and Schmidhuber, *World Models*primary research on learning compressed spatial and temporal representations of environments for agent behavior.
Learn more
- Check assumptions against reality with [[context-to-reality-drift|Context-to-Reality Drift]].
Public history
46 recorded events · 46 public summaries
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why-it-matters approved by a human reviewer.
example approved by a human reviewer.
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remember-it-this-way approved by a human reviewer.
related-terms approved by a human reviewer.
sources returned for revision.
learn-more approved by a human reviewer.
Requested wording was prepared without changing approved or existing sections.
Radar reviewed the pending sources section for human consideration.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
Radar must rereview the complete world-model term after an accepted text change.
sources approved by a human reviewer.
sources approved wording became the current section text.
All section gates are approved; content version 2 is now a fully approved term.
Radar rereviewed the human-approved definition wording for this exact version.
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Definition review recorded as replace.
Source: vault/Glossary/terms/world-model/term.md · sha256:f7ef697f7c8a92c72228b504e1241c5f6530ff42ae823fd67be7cce8c8a6cfe5 · Release: rs-glossary-glossary-team-poc-0.5.5-2026-09-02