Researchers (Including Google) are Betting on Virtual 'World Models' for Better AI

"Today's AIs are book smart," reports the Wall Street Journal. "Everything they know they learned from available language, images and videos. To evolve further, they have to get street smart."And that requires "world models," which are "gaining momentum in frontier research and could allow technology to take on new roles in our lives."
The key is enabling AI to learn from their environments and faithfully represent an abstract version of them in their "heads," the way humans and animals do. To d