Keyon Vafa

@keyonV

Incoming assistant professor @UCBerkeley | Now @Harvard_Data & @bicyclesftmind @MIT | Prev PhD @Columbia | Researching AI/implicit world models

keyonvafa.com Joined August 2011

968 Following 5.4K Followers 1.4K Posts

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Keyon Vafa @keyonV Jul 11, 2025

Can an AI model predict perfectly and still have a terrible world model?

What would that even mean?

Our new ICML paper formalizes these questions

One result tells the story: A transformer trained on 10M solar systems nails planetary orbits. But it botches gravitational laws 🧵

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Keyon Vafa @keyonV Jul 14

Thrilled to share I'll be joining UC Berkeley next year as an assistant professor in @UCBStatistics and affiliated with @Berkeley_EECS.

My research will build methods to test/improve the implicit world models of AI systems, so that they reflect reality and human understanding.

Keyon Vafa @keyonV Jul 7

Had a great time chatting with @TaliamSherman on her podcast Tomayto Tomahto.

Check out her full series -- so many great guests and conversations, especially for someone who just graduated from college!
open.spotify.com/episode/46tWNC….

open.spotify.com Evaluating AI World Models w/ Keyon Vafa Tomayto Tomahto · Episode

Keyon Vafa @keyonV Mar 17

Really interesting work exploring whether/why next-token predictors would encode "useless" features

Mark Rofin @broccolitwit Mar 17

1/ Did you ever look at some feature represented by a Transformer and wonder: "Why would it even learn that? 🤔 "
We did! Announcing the ICLR'26 paper "Understanding the Emergence of Seemingly Useless Features in Next-Token Predictors"

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Keyon Vafa @keyonV Dec 7, 2025

I'll be speaking at the Language, Agent, and World Models (LAW) Workshop this afternoon at 2:15 in Upper Level Ballroom 20D!

LAW Workshop@NeurIPS 2025 Verified account @LAW2025_NeurIPS Dec 5, 2025

🔥 We are pleased to announce the talk title for our #LAW2025 #NeurIPS workshop

Join us on 📅Sunday, Dec 7th in📍Upper Level Ballroom 20D

Full schedule here: sites.google.com/view/law-2025/…

We look forward to seeing you all this Sunday! #NeurIPS2025 #AI #ML #WorldModel #Agents #LLMs

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