From Masks to Worlds: A Hitchhiker's Guide to World Models
Authors: name: Jinbin Bai; name: Yu Lei; name: Hecong Wu; name: Yuchen Zhu; name: Shufan Li; name: Yi Xin; name: Xiangtai Li; name: Molei Tao; name: Aditya Grover; name: Ming-Hsuan Yang
Published: 2025-10-23 15:46:44

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.