World models of environment, agent and joint agent-environment systems

arXiv cs.AIAugust 24, 2026en

arXiv:2608.20401v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: World models are a central component of model-based reinforcement learning. They are usually discussed in terms of what variables they predict, such as observations, rewards, states, latent or information states. We argue that there is a prior distinction: which channel they model. We consider three cases: the environment channel $O_{:} \mid A_{:}$, the agent channel $A_{:} \mid O_{:}$, and the realised joint process $(A, O)_{:}$, equivalently viewed as a channel with no inputs. Using computational mechanics, we define canonical predictive models for these three cases as $\epsilon$-transducers or $\epsilon$-machines. Canonical environment model

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