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arXiv · 2510.20668

From Masks to Worlds: A Hitchhiker's Guide to World Models

Jinbin Bai·Yu Lei·Hecong Wu·Yuchen Zhu·Shufan Li·Yi Xin·Xiangtai Li·Molei Tao·Aditya Grover·Ming-Hsuan Yang
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Abstract

This is not a typical survey of world models; it is a guide for those who want to build worlds. We do not aim to catalog every paper that has ever mentioned a ``world model". Instead, we follow one clear road: from early masked models that unified representation learning across modalities, to unified architectures that share a single paradigm, then to interactive generative models that close the action-perception loop, and finally to memory-augmented systems that sustain consistent worlds over time. We bypass loosely related branches to focus on the core: the generative heart, the interactive loop, and the memory system. We show that this is the most promising path towards true world models.

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Jinbin Bai, Yu Lei, Hecong Wu, Yuchen Zhu, Shufan Li, Yi Xin, Xiangtai Li, Molei Tao, Aditya Grover, Ming-Hsuan Yang. 2025-10-23. From Masks to Worlds: A Hitchhiker's Guide to World Models. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.20668

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