arxivcs.LGcs.AI2026-07-15
The SIGReg Objective as Variational Free Energy: A Theoretical Active-Inference Account of JEPA World Models
Fabio Arnez, Alexandra Gomez-Villa
Joint-Embedding Predictive Architectures (JEPAs) are the dominant design for latent world models, yet they are usually justified by empirical performance rather than a normative principle. We show that the choice of anti-collapse regulariser determines whether a JEPA's training o…