<\/p>\n
To achieve this, Hafner relies on something called model-based reinforcement learning. He develops world models\u2014AI models designed to emulate physical reality\u2014and trains agents within them. The agent essentially treats the model as a real-world simulation and learns how to act there. It then uses those experiences to make predictions (to dream or imagine, Hafner might say) about future outcomes. That allows agents\u2014or the robots they\u2019re embedded in\u2014to navigate unfamiliar situations IRL.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI get to interact with a lot of really smart people in research at Google, and he easily sits in the top half of 1%.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n
Timothy Lillicrap, Google DeepMind<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Unlike other efforts, Hafner\u2019s technique enables agents and the robots they control to execute massively complicated tasks without the real-world trial-and-\u00aderror training that\u2019s traditionally been used in robotics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hafner grew up in a rural town in northeastern Germany, where his parents were both classical musicians. He learned programming from a neighbor, and in high school he began taking online courses about AI, which quickly developed into a passion. \u201cI was always fascinated with how thinking works,\u201d he says. AI offered him a way to emulate it on a computer.<\/p>\n
In 2015, as a second-year under\u00adgraduate studying engineering at Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, he won a role as a student researcher at Google Brain. From there, he went on to a dozen internships and other positions at the company, including stints with Google Brain and Google DeepMind (the two have since merged under DeepMind) in the UK, Canada, and the US. He worked with industry legends including Geoffrey Hinton, who is often referred to as one of the godfathers of AI, and Ashish Vaswani, coauthor of the groundbreaking research paper \u201cAttention Is All You Need,\u201d which described the transformer technology used by today\u2019s large language models.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#entrepreneur #developing #agents #plan #ahead #unexpected<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To achieve this, Hafner relies on something called model-based reinforcement learning. He develops world models\u2014AI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21530,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2095,585,9210,13664,2275,3271],"class_list":["post-21529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-agents","tag-ahead","tag-developing","tag-entrepreneur","tag-plan","tag-unexpected"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Danijar-0G6A8052-2-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}