What Exactly Is a World Model? History, Technology, and the $10 B Bet
The article traces the two decades‑long, parallel research lines that birthed video world models—dreaming agents in reinforcement learning and learning physics from human video—explains how they converged in 2024‑2025, evaluates current capabilities and limitations, and analyzes the $10 billion investment landscape and strategic moves by NVIDIA, OpenAI, and others.
