This is a reflection of a complaint I frequently make about so called "world models". It's more accurate to call them video game models. They don't simulate the world, they simulate video games. For that reason a common issue with them is that the physics are video game physics rather than real world physics.

It also failed to properly model the physics of knights riding wyverns into battle.

People are arguing if the marble bust should've toppled over or not, completely missing the fact that marble is brittle and the bust would have surely cracked

How often do things in the real world not behave exactly as you expected them to?

I feeling I get from this is that this could be the mental model for a robot in the real world, continuously corrected by actual events.

We all have a world model in our heads of what we think is going to happen, we adjust quickly (or not) based on what does. This is pretty incredible stuff.

I agree but I feel like the exaggerated physics were intentional and fitting with the video theme. If they had wanted it to topple, they wouldn't have posted the video.

They were demonstrating steering.

That's the thing about machine learning over time, and the big hole in the whole world model idea. Time and time again we make simulations and train models and we think that loop will work. It never does.

And why not? Because the first model that can actually learn to handle the simulation not only can do the simulation internally too, but it can do it better than out simulation.

It's where (ex-)"AI luminaries" go to die. It's a way to make glacial, slow progress in the correct direction while never actually getting anywhere.

So we get to a point and people keep making complicated simulations of one kind or another ... and then someone (some model) who's never used the simulation, and doesn't need it for model training gets by far the highest score on every benchmark and everyone agrees the simulation was kind of beside the point.

yes. I feel Google's video physics has always been bad. slow, aritifical, unnatural.