Here\u2019s a test for infants: Show them a glass of water on a desk. Hide it behind a wooden board. Now move the board toward the glass. If the board keeps going past the glass, as if it weren\u2019t there, are they surprised? Many 6-month-olds are, and by a year, almost all children have an intuitive notion of an object\u2019s permanence, learned through observation. Now some artificial intelligence models do too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Researchers have developed an AI system that learns about the world via videos and demonstrates a notion of \u201csurprise\u201d when presented with information that goes against the knowledge it has gleaned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The model, created by Meta and called Video Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture (V-JEPA), does not make any assumptions about the physics of the world contained in the videos. Nonetheless, it can begin to make sense of how the world works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTheir claims are, a priori, very plausible, and the results are super interesting,\u201d says Micha Heilbron(opens a new tab)<\/a>, a cognitive scientist at the University of Amsterdam who studies how brains and artificial systems make sense of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> An AI model called V-JEPA is capable of \u201cintuiting\u201d the physical properties of the real world, gaining a sense of object permanence, the constancy of shape and color, and the effects of gravity. @anilananth<\/a> reports: https:\/\/t.co\/jRa1k9RES0<\/a><\/p>— Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) October 3, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>