I haven't heard about them, I was going to comment about how these reaserchers will get bitter lesson'd, but after looking at what they do, their "world models" are actually transformer models.

This means that the conversation has shifted to the point where we can assume that transforms hold emergent world models (already proven for tiny toy worlds). This is good, because it's probably true.

In any case, this looks awesome and I wish them all the best!