World Models (WM) are increasingly seen as a foundation for intelligent agents that can predict, plan, and act beyond their training distribution. In this paper, we study WMs from a causal perspective across multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from perceptual observations to building a conceptual representation of the structure governing the environment dynamics.
arXiv:2608. 07214v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern AI is no longer a single model but an ecosystem: classical ML predictors, deep and multimodal models, large language models, and agents, each trained and tuned over different data sources and each producing outputs at scale that become inputs to the others.
By Dazhuo Qiu, Yingli Zhou, Amedeo Pachera, Angela Bonifati, Andrea Mauri
The paper introduces Representational Empowerment (RepEmp), a metric for selecting representational elements that enhance an agent’s future modeling and planning abilities. Using a hierarchical Curator-Actor architecture, RepEmp is tested in three experiments: a closed‑vocabulary causal‑learning task, simulations showing improved structure recovery and transfer, and an open‑vocabulary planning domain where an LLM‑augmented Curator builds compact symbolic libraries. Ablation studies confirm that RepEmp is essential for these gains, positioning it as a key principle for continual model construction under resource constraints.
By Fei Dai, Hanqi Zhou, Alison Gopnik, Charley Wu
The paper introduces Representational Empowerment (RepEmp), a metric for selecting representational elements that enhance an agent’s future modeling and planning abilities. It applies RepEmp within a hierarchical Curator-Actor framework and demonstrates its effectiveness across three experiments: a closed‑vocabulary causal‑learning task, simulations showing improved structure recovery and transfer, and an open‑vocabulary planning domain where an LLM‑augmented Curator builds compact symbolic libraries that generalize better than baselines. Ablation of RepEmp removes these benefits, underscoring its role in guiding continual model construction under resource constraints.
arXiv:2609.26037v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Explanations are central to causal reasoning, and cognitive science has long established that the human drive to explain is itself a mechanism for lear...
By Nicholas Tagliapietra, Florian Peter Busch, Moritz Willig, Matej Ze\v{c}evi\'c, Lavdim Halilaj, Juergen Luettin, Kristian Kersting
arXiv:2609.36985v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: The central challenge of world modeling is to learn representations that capture how the world evolves. However, existing world models predominantly...
By Ziqi Liu, Songhan Yang, Linfan Zhou, Jiatong Liu, Lijun Peng, Long Wan, Yinqi Bai
The paper introduces a formal framework that uses symmetries in data to keep causal mechanisms invariant, providing a simple and general mathematical language for causal reasoning. It outlines how to describe models and queries, and presents strategies for rigorously identifying causal effects from data within this framework. The approach reproduces known results for IID data and extends causal analysis to non‑IID settings, complex queries beyond do‑ or soft‑interventions, and incorporates missing data, transfer, and robustness considerations.
By Martin Rabel, Jakob Runge
arXiv:2606. 19594v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal abstractions formalize when a high-level structural causal model (SCM) captures the interventional behavior of a lower-level SCM.
By Th\'eo Saulus, Simon Lacoste-Julien, Dhanya Sridhar
arXiv:2606. 05966v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Understanding and reasoning about the physical world is the foundation of intelligent behavior, yet state-of-the-art vision-language models (VLMs) still fail at causal physical reasoning, often producing plausible but incorrect answers.
By Tianyi Tang, Zhuoyi Lin, Zeyu Feng, Tianyi Ma, Yew-Soon Ong, Ivor Tsang, Haiyan Yin
arXiv:2606. 24160v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Causal inference provides a set of principles and tools that allow one to combine data and knowledge about an environment to reason with questions of counterfactual nature, i.
By Elias Bareinboim, Junzhe Zhang, Sanghack Lee
arXiv:2609.23753v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Generative world models aim to predict future states conditioned on actions, where action controllability is fundamental for reliable dynamics modeli...
By Yikun Miao, Fangqi Zhu, Quanxin Shou, Xiaoyi Pang, Zhengyang Yan, Junhao Li, Haodong Wang, Zicong Hong, Song Guo
Causal inference provides a set of principles and tools that allow one to combine data and knowledge about an environment to reason with questions of counterfactual nature, i. e.