The World Model Shift: Why AI's Next Trick Is Simulating Reality, Not Just Text

For the last three years, the AI industry has been obsessed with one question: Can the model generate better text? Better code, better emails, better essays, better haikus about the Roman Empire. It made sense — language is the API of human civilization, and whoever cracked it first won the lottery.

But something shifted this week. Not with a CEO keynote or a Super Bowl ad, but in the quiet way tectonic plates move before the earthquake.

The industry's attention, as the **South China Morning...