From the source
From naive software to systems capable of interacting intelligently with us and our world, unlocking intelligence and scientific breakthroughs Oliver Cameron February 17th, 2026 Humans have been trying to model the world since our beginning.
Understanding why we’re here and how everything around us works are questions we will never stop asking.
Early humans carved notches into bone to track the lunar cycle.
Polynesian navigators crossed the open ocean using models of swell and stars.
Plato argued the physical world was a shadow of deeper structure.
Da Vinci sketched anatomy and fluid dynamics because, to him, understanding how the world works was a prerequisite to doing anything useful.
Einstein showed the rules of the universe could be compressed into elegant mathematical form.
Penrose demonstrated that causal structure is the deep architecture of physical reality, and Pearl argued true understanding requires causality, not just correlation.
Over thousands of years, we’ve tried to better model the world, to make it a better place.
We’ve made much progress, but we can go much further.
This is why I work on world models.
Are Language Models Enough to Understand the World?
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