Causal-JEPA: Learning World Models through Object-Level Latent Interventions

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11389v1
• Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2026 21:47:26 GMT
• Title: Causal-JEPA: Learning World Models through Object-Level Latent Interventions
• Authors: Heejeong Nam, Quentin Le Lidec, Lucas Maes, Yann LeCun, Randall Balestriero,
• Abstract summary: C-JEPA is a simple and flexible object-centric world model that extends masked joint embedding prediction from image patches to object-centric representations.<n>By applying object-level masking that requires an object's state to be inferred from other objects, C-JEPA induces latent interventions with counterfactual-like effects.
• Score: 46.562961546550895
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: World models require robust relational understanding to support prediction, reasoning, and control. While object-centric representations provide a useful abstraction, they are not sufficient to capture interaction-dependent dynamics. We therefore propose C-JEPA, a simple and flexible object-centric world model that extends masked joint embedding prediction from image patches to object-centric representations. By applying object-level masking that requires an object's state to be inferred from other objects, C-JEPA induces latent interventions with counterfactual-like effects and prevents shortcut solutions, making interaction reasoning essential. Empirically, C-JEPA leads to consistent gains in visual question answering, with an absolute improvement of about 20\% in counterfactual reasoning compared to the same architecture without object-level masking. On agent control tasks, C-JEPA enables substantially more efficient planning by using only 1\% of the total latent input features required by patch-based world models, while achieving comparable performance. Finally, we provide a formal analysis demonstrating that object-level masking induces a causal inductive bias via latent interventions. Our code is available at https://github.com/galilai-group/cjepa.

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