读后感：
28 April 2026
‘World models’ are AI’s latest sensation: what are they and what can they do?
Training AI world models on data about physical environments could improve their real-world capabilities in technologies such as robotics.
By Davide Castelvecchi
—— An ongoing trend in artificial intelligence could have huge implications for how the technology is used in research.
现在我所看的杂志上也铺天盖地刊登着各种人工智能的东西，不管是科技前沿，还是报刊随笔。
过去的人工智能大语言模型，本质上算是一个知识库，它读了人类所有的书，学会了统计概率，知道在“天空中下着”后面大概率接“雨”。但它不知道什么是“雨”，不知道雨滴落在皮肤上会带来热量的流失，会冷会黏腻，也不知道重力加速如何让水滴变成扁平的。它活在一个由人类语言编织的、抽象的柏拉图洞穴里。
但现在的“世界模型”企图让AI在没有人类灌输知识的情况下，自发理解现实世界的物理法则、因果关系，并通过规律预测未来。它再不需要去画出玻璃碎掉的每一个像素，只用要在脑海中形成一个抽象概念，比如玻璃从高空坠落收到撞击会结构瓦解，它学会的是因果律和物理常识，这本是人类大脑才会构建的逻辑，
这篇报道里写的是当今的两个技术派系，一派是Google、Runway这样，用算力堆砌像素的连贯互动世界，大概就是只要数据库全知，只要它足够像，它就是存在。另一派是杨立昆的AMI Labs，抛弃表象，用逻辑去理解世界，像人一样。
如果第一种赢了，意味着宇宙根本没有终极真理，有的只是庞大数据之下的概率涌现，如果第二种赢了，意味着宇宙确实存在一套极其简洁的底层代码。
以前，“眼见为实”是人类社会默契的底层契约。我们基于共同看到的物理现实来建立法律、形成社会共识。但是如果世界模型成熟到可以实时互动生成任何符合物理规律的世界时，现实和虚拟的边界其实是微不足道的。
如果“符合物理规律”都不再是真实世界的专利，那“客观现实”的标准又是什么呢？
当然这些可能还非常遥远，但又回想过去几十年的科技发展，又会发现这条线与伦理的底线迟早会相撞，并且并不远。
人类的科技技术正在迎来奇点，而创造奇点的我们自身，却在这片汪洋里如同芥舟，如此渺小。
我不觉得人类是什么自然界的优胜者，人类点燃普罗米修斯之火，到底是为什么呢？是为了让人类看到自己的渺小吗？火种最初是为了取暖和驱赶野兽。但火点燃了，烧起来了，蔓延成山火。
人类制造工具的能力，超过了人类想象这些工具后果的能力。就像我们制造原子弹，但我们的其实还没准备好如何面对“全球毁灭”的心理重担；我们推进AI，放任人类文明内在的、无法遏制的造物主情结与无限扩张的征服欲。
我们只是微尘，在这个宇宙里，和动物们，和人工智能们，和草木都是一样的存在，都是自然界的蜉蝣。
但我们太自大，妄想用自己有限的认知去窥探无限的宇宙。意识到自己的渺小，是打破自恋的一种方式。
进而我想到：发明人工智能，把人类科技推向这样的奇点的资本巨头们，他们是这样想的吗？他们会有这种“万物皆蜉蝣”的诗意吗？他们咬着牙、红着眼，开足马力把人类往奇点的悬崖上推。
我曾觉得达尔文主义早就该溃败，但现在看，它只是寄生在了资本与算法的肉身里，新达尔文主义们开始狂欢。
这些资本和科技巨头之间的竞争，不是温和的学术讨论，更像生存斗争，不进化，就灭绝。一场你死我活的AI的军备竞赛。这个比赛里只有“市场”“对手”，一场欲望的无限增殖。
就像人类的繁殖欲望，好像就是人类把繁殖欲望、把这种对“不朽”和“延续”的疯狂渴望，平移到了科技上。
人类的征服欲也体现在方方面面上，小到一个家庭父母对孩子的掌控，大到对宇宙的解密，都要在数字世界里创造一个硅基人类中心主义，在这场全息游戏里，权力的结构可以重新改写，统治者可以不再叫特朗普、习近平或者普金，数字造物主与国家总理同时存在。
地缘政治的首脑在现实中管理养老金、地缘边界、粮食和核弹，统治人类需要呼吸和排泄的肉身。数字造物主则管理社会的“常识”与“未来”。
科技史就像一部人类中心主义不断被暴击、又不断想在数字空间里试图借尸还魂的历史。从哥白尼的地动说，人类意识到地球不是宇宙中心，到达尔文的进化论，人类意识到自己就是动物，到弗洛伊德的潜意识，人类知道自己的理性并不主宰自己的意识，到现在的世界模型。
巨轮无法停下，全速前进，直到撞上奇点的冰山，然后沉入深海，睡在泰坦尼克号旁边。
突然想到了这个意象：泰坦尼克号也是人类工业时代狂妄的产物，自诩永不沉没。
但是巨头们真的没想过我想的这些吗？
我觉得他们不仅想过，而且更深，甚至充满宗教仪式般的神圣使命感。
想来想去，我觉得我做不了什么，我控制不了他们，也控制不了海浪中的人，我只能控制我自己从短视频和算法里尽可能抽身出来。读书、创作、写作，靠我的大脑，还有对真实存在的人的触碰，还有真心。（虽然我每次会谈到“爱”，实际上我的付出并不是泛目标的，因为过于低频的人，本身其实会被我隔离掉，这些人大概率是不会进入我的好友圈，只是打招呼的关系，因为我的能量不是无限的，我会筛选亲近的人。）
这让我想起了哲学史上的一个浪漫转身。尼采宣告“神死了”，人类陷入了巨大的虚无主义。但随后存在主义者们站出来说：正因为没有宏大的、命定的意义，我们每一次基于自由意志的选择、每一次对真实人类的痛苦的感同身受，才真正发明了我们自己。
在写这些的时候，信息和电话又来了，一个接一个，还是老生常谈的那些“人生课题”，每个人说的都雷同：结婚、工作、生孩子，别人家的孩子又怎么了，他们在干什么，以前认识的人在干什么？开了多少工厂、赚了多少钱，哪个人在自己的社交平台上展现出了多光鲜亮丽的形象，混得多好，有多少粉丝，天天都在高档餐厅拍照……
到底和我有什么关系？
那瞬间我脑海里只浮现出了一段话：
你每次发布照片，都是一次微型表演。你精心策划、调整角度、过滤现实，直到它看起来完美无瑕。这源于我们大脑中一种被称为“聚光灯效应”的心理错觉。心理学家托马斯·吉洛维奇和肯尼斯·萨维茨基在1999年的一项里程碑式研究中提出了“聚光灯效应”的概念。它指的是我们以自我为中心的倾向，即认为其他人比实际情况更关注我们、评判我们、关心我们的行为。社交媒体利用了这种人类的自然怪癖，并为其注入了数字化的“兴奋剂”。它将日常生活变成了一个舞台，我们想象着一群看不见的观众正透过玻璃热切地注视着我们。我们不再把美丽的日落视为一种体验，而是把它当作为网络平台做一份无薪实习。 ——by：Sarah Hayes
我只是觉得，硅谷和科技寡头们在用万亿算力编织着脱离肉身的世界模型、精神永生和数字飞升，想把人类不朽的思维刻进硅基芯片，而现实的生活却是家人用一种传承了数千年的农耕文明逻辑，指责着眼前的孩子：去工作、去买房、去结婚、去在繁衍的西西弗斯巨石下奉献出自己的一生，并称之为“美好的传统”。这两个画面同时在我脑海里崩裂，一个谈永生，一个谈催生。我真的觉得……荒唐又割裂。
但把这两个画面放进人类文明演化、社会契约和达尔文主义的坐标系里，我又发现这两者，其实是同一种病毒。
如果剥离掉温情脉脉的亲情外衣，在生物学和社会学上，“繁殖”还有别的名字：基因暴政、社会大机器的劳动力再生产。
人类的身体必须通过繁衍来对抗个体的死亡。而世俗社会则通过“买房、结婚”这种社会契约，将人类绑在经济循环的永动机上，很多人无法想象除了“成为机器的零件、制造新的零件”之外，生命还能有什么其他的解法。用一生的操劳，向这个传统的达尔文矩阵效忠，再说一句：传统就是这样，这就是现实。
讽刺的是，科技巨头们在玩的数字永生和世界模型，不过是这一套繁衍掌控欲在硅基世界里的另一种形态，一个……赛博子宫，
旧的道德体系无法给新一代年轻人提供任何对抗精神虚无的武器，只会加速家庭的解体，在格子间里拼命加班、为了买房结婚而耗尽心血的年轻人，他们以为自己是在为自己的幸福奋斗。但实际上，他们的每一滴汗水、每一次消费，都变成了源源不断流向硅谷和华尔街的资本。资本再把这些钱变成算力，去推进那个即将把普通人彻底边缘化的数字神明，通过大规模的广告与短视频，或者水军，二次洗脑普通人更努力工作与效忠自己一直在奉行的世俗活法，用最传统的路径，为自己的“被淘汰”买单。
几年后，奇点彻底爆发，原本由“工作、买房、结婚、生子、为孩子操劳”构成的、统治了人类几千年的传统社会契约彻底崩塌了。在这个时候，那些一辈子被传统观念洗脑、突然失去了“操劳目标”的人。那些通过无法工作，无法通过传统的社会坐标证明自己的价值的人，又要干什么呢？
未来世界里，到底谁才能真正继承“人”这个物种的遗产？
……遗产，“人”这个物种的遗产，我觉得谈论“遗产”，或者我要留下什么东西给世界，都是人类的自负，是对时间单向流动的恐惧。人类没有什么骄傲值得留在这颗星球，留在这个宇宙里，我们认为那些宏大的命运，人类千万年的历史，在宇宙里只是不及万分之一秒的闪烁，人类会记录自己532小时前的一次眨眼吗？
人类或许真的一文不值，连微尘都不如，只是硅基汪洋里，转瞬即逝的一道波浪。
想了这么多，既然大家不过是波浪，那我和那些自愿成为“零件”而操劳一生、那些满心满眼只有别人过得好不好、有没有我好、那些认为人“应该”做什么的人，也没什么不同。无数条路，殊途同归。
遗产？没有遗产，只有当下的每一秒。
——
Reading Reflection:
28 April 2026
‘World models’ are AI’s latest sensation: what are they and what can they do?
Training AI world models on data about physical environments could improve their real-world capabilities in technologies such as robotics.
By Davide Castelvecchi
—— An ongoing trend in artificial intelligence could have huge implications for how the technology is used in research.
Nowadays, the magazines I read are overwhelmingly flooded with all sorts of articles about artificial intelligence, ranging from the frontiers of technology to casual newspaper essays.
In the past, large language models of artificial intelligence were essentially knowledge bases. Having read all of human literature, they learned statistical probabilities, knowing that the phrase “falling from the sky” is highly likely to be followed by “rain.” But they did not know what “rain” is. They did not know that raindrops falling on skin cause a loss of body heat, feeling cold and clammy, nor did they understand how gravitational acceleration flattens a water droplet. They lived in an abstract Platonic cave woven by human language.
But now, “world models” attempt to enable AI to spontaneously understand the physical laws and causal relationships of the real world without human indoctrination, and to predict the future through these patterns. It no longer needs to render every single pixel of shattered glass; it only needs to form an abstract concept in its mind—for instance, that glass falling from a high altitude will structurally disintegrate upon impact. What it learns is the law of causality and physical common sense, a logic that originally only the human brain would construct.
This report describes the two technical factions of today. One camp is represented by Google and Runway, using computing power to stack pixels into a coherent, interactive world—essentially, as long as the database is omniscient and it looks similar enough, it exists. The other camp is Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs, which discards mere appearances and uses logic to understand the world, just like a human being.
If the first approach wins, it implies that the universe has no ultimate truth at all; there is only the probabilistic emergence beneath massive data. If the second approach wins, it means the universe truly does possess an extremely concise set of underlying code.
Previously, “seeing is believing” was the tacit underlying contract of human society. We established laws and formed social consensus based on a shared physical reality. But if world models mature to the point where they can generate any world conforming to physical laws in real-time interactive ways, the boundary between reality and virtuality actually becomes trivial.
If “conforming to physical laws” is no longer the exclusive patent of the real world, then what is the standard for “objective reality”?
Of course, this might still be very far away, but looking back at the technological development of the past few decades, one finds that this trajectory is bound to collide with our ethical bottom line sooner or later, and it is not far off.
Human technology is approaching a singularity, yet we ourselves, the creators of this singularity, are like mustard-seed boats in this vast ocean, so incredibly small.
I do not believe humans are some kind of victors of nature. Why did humanity ignite the fire of Prometheus in the first place? Was it to make humans see their own insignificance? The kindling was initially meant for warmth and to drive away wild beasts. But the fire was lit, it burned, and it spread into a wildfire.
Humanity’s ability to create tools has surpassed our ability to imagine the consequences of those tools. Just as we built the atomic bomb, we were not actually prepared to bear the psychological burden of “global annihilation”; we push AI forward, indulging human civilization’s inherent, uncontainable Creator complex and its infinitely expanding desire for conquest.
We are merely dust. In this universe, we exist exactly the same as animals, artificial intelligences, and vegetation—all are mayflies of nature.
Yet we are too arrogant, vainly attempting to pry into the infinite universe with our finite cognition. Realizing our own insignificance is one way to shatter this narcissism.
Furthermore, I wonder: the capital titans who invent AI and push human technology toward such a singularity, do they think this way? Do they possess this poetry of “all things are mayflies”? Gritting their teeth and with red eyes, they drive at full throttle, pushing humanity toward the cliff of the singularity.
I once thought Darwinism should have been defeated long ago, but looking at it now, it has merely parasitized the flesh of capital and algorithms. The neo-Darwinists have begun their carnival.
The competition between these capital and tech giants is no gentle academic discussion; it is more like a struggle for survival—evolve, or go extinct. A life-and-death AI arms race. In this competition, there are only “markets” and “rivals,” an infinite proliferation of desire.
It is much like the human reproductive desire; it seems humanity has simply transposed this reproductive urge—this frantic craving for “immortality” and “continuation”—onto technology.
Humanity’s desire for conquest manifests in all aspects, from the micro-level of parents controlling their children in a household, to the macro-level of decoding the universe. They all seek to create a silicon-based anthropocentrism in the digital world. In this holographic game, the structure of power can be completely rewritten. The rulers may no longer be named Trump, Xi Jinping, or Putin; digital creators and state premiers will coexist simultaneously.
Geopolitical heads manage pensions, geopolitical borders, food, and nuclear bombs in reality, ruling over human bodies that need to breathe and excrete. The digital creators, on the other hand, manage society’s “common sense” and its “future.”
The history of technology is like a chronicle of anthropocentrism being continuously battered, yet constantly attempting a resurrection in digital space. From Copernicus’s heliocentrism, where humans realized the Earth is not the center of the universe, to Darwin’s theory of evolution, where humans realized they are merely animals, to Freud’s subconscious, where humans learned that their rationality does not dictate their consciousness, and now to the world models.
The giant ship cannot stop; it moves forward at full speed until it hits the iceberg of the singularity, then sinks into the deep sea, sleeping next to the Titanic.
This imagery suddenly came to mind: the Titanic was a product of the arrogance of the human industrial age, boasting itself unsinkable.
But have the titans truly never thought about what I am thinking? I believe they have not only thought about it, but have thought deeper, even filled with a sense of sacred mission akin to a religious ritual.
Thinking it over, I realize there is nothing I can do. I cannot control them, nor can I control the people adrift in the waves. I can only control myself to step away from short videos and algorithms as much as possible. Reading, creating, writing, relying on my own brain, and the touch of real, existing people, along with a sincere heart. (Although I always talk about “love,” in reality, my devotion is not aimless. People of low frequency will naturally be isolated by me; they have a high probability of never entering my circle of friends, remaining merely a greeting relationship, because my energy is not infinite. I deliberately filter the people I keep close.)
This reminds me of a romantic turn in the history of philosophy. Nietzsche declared “God is dead,” plunging humanity into massive nihilism. But then the existentialists stood up and said: precisely because there is no grand, predestined meaning, every choice we make based on free will, every empathic resonance with the suffering of real humans, is what truly invents ourselves.
While I am writing this, messages and phone calls come in again, one after another, still the same old clichés of “life subjects.” Everyone says exactly the same thing: getting married, working, having children; what is up with someone else’s child, what are they doing, what are people we used to know doing? How many factories they opened, how much money they made, which person displayed such a glamorous image on their social platforms, how well they are doing, how many followers they have, taking photos in high-end restaurants every day… What does any of this have to do with me?
In that instant, only one passage surfaced in my mind:
Every time you post a photo, it is a micro performance. You are curating, angling, and filtering reality until it looks just right. This happens because of a psychological glitch in our brains called the Spotlight Effect. Coined by psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky in a landmark 1999 study, the Spotlight Effect is our egocentric tendency to believe that other people are noticing us, judging us, and caring about our actions way more than they actually are. Social media takes this natural human quirk and injects it with digital steroids. It transforms everyday life into a stage where we imagine an invisible audience eagerly watching from behind the glass. We treat a beautiful sunset not as an experience, but as an unpaid internship for an online grid.Why Highly Intelligent People Are Quietly Quitting Social Media. They aren’t antisocial, they just mastered the art of living. by：Sarah Hayes
I just feel that Silicon Valley and the tech oligarchs are using trillions in computing power to weave a disembodied world model, spiritual immortality, and digital ascension, trying to etch immortal human thought into silicon chips. Yet real life is family members using the logic of an agrarian civilization passed down for thousands of years, scolding the youth in front of them: go to work, buy a house, get married, dedicate your entire life under the Sisyphusian boulder of reproduction, and call it a “beautiful tradition.” These two scenes fracture simultaneously in my mind—one speaks of immortality, the other pushes for fertility. I truly find it… absurd and fractured.
But plotting these two scenes onto the coordinates of human civilizational evolution, social contracts, and Darwinism, I discover that these two are, in fact, the exact same virus.
If we strip away the tender veil of familial affection, in biology and sociology, “reproduction” has other names: the tyranny of genes, the reproduction of labor for the grand social machine.
The human body must counter individual death through procreation. Secular society, meanwhile, binds humans to the perpetual motion machine of economic cycles through social contracts like “buying a house and getting married.” Many people cannot imagine any alternative solution to life beyond “becoming a cog in the machine and manufacturing new cogs.” Using a lifetime of toil to swear allegiance to this traditional Darwinian matrix, they simply add: this is tradition; this is reality.
The irony is that the digital immortality and world models being played with by the tech giants are nothing more than another manifestation of this reproductive control desire within the silicon world—a… cyber-womb.
The old moral system cannot provide the younger generation with any weapons against spiritual nihilism; it will only accelerate the dissolution of the family. The young people working desperately overtime in cubicles, exhausting their lifeblood to buy a house and get married, believe they are fighting for their own happiness. But in reality, every drop of their sweat, every instance of their consumption, turns into capital flowing endlessly into Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Capital then turns this money into computing power to advance that digital deity which is about to completely marginalize ordinary people. Through massive advertising, short videos, or troll armies, it secondarily brainwashes ordinary people into working harder and remaining loyal to the secular way of living they have always followed, using the most traditional path to pay for their own “obsolescence.”
A few years from now, when the singularity completely erupts, the traditional social contract that has ruled humanity for thousands of years—made up of “working, buying a house, getting married, having children, and toiling for the children”—will completely collapse. At that time, those who have been brainwashed by traditional concepts for a lifetime and suddenly lose their “goal of toil”—those who can no longer work, who cannot prove their value through traditional social coordinates—what will they do then?
In the future world, who can truly inherit the legacy of the “human” species? …Legacy. The legacy of the “human” species. I think talking about “legacy,” or what I want to leave to the world, is all human vanity, a fear of the unidirectional flow of time. Humanity has no pride worthy of leaving on this planet, leaving in this universe. We think those grand destinies, the thousands of years of human history, are but a flicker of less than a ten-thousandth of a second in the cosmos. Would a human record a blink of their own eye from 532 hours ago?
Humanity is perhaps truly worthless, less than even dust, just a fleeting wave in the silicon ocean. Having thought so much, since everyone is but a wave, then I am no different from those who voluntarily become “cogs” and toil for a lifetime, those whose eyes and minds are solely focused on whether others are living well, whether they are better than me, those who believe what a person “should” do. Countless paths, ultimately reaching the exact same destination.
Legacy? There is no legacy, only every present second.