{"id":1106502,"date":"2024-11-22T03:39:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T11:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-research-item&#038;p=1106502"},"modified":"2025-05-29T11:39:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T18:39:24","slug":"scaling-laws-for-pre-training-agents-and-world-models","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/publication\/scaling-laws-for-pre-training-agents-and-world-models\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaling Laws for Pre-training Agents and World Models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The performance of embodied agents has been shown to improve by increasing model parameters, dataset size, and compute. This has been demonstrated in domains from robotics to video games, when generative learning objectives on offline datasets (pre-training) are used to model an agent&#8217;s behavior (imitation learning) or their environment (world modeling). This paper characterizes the role of scale in these tasks more precisely. Going beyond the simple intuition that `bigger is better&#8217;, we show that the same types of power laws found in language modeling (e.g. between loss and optimal model size), also arise in world modeling and imitation learning. However, the coefficients of these laws are heavily influenced by the tokenizer, task \\&architecture &#8212; this has important implications on the optimal sizing of models and data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The performance of embodied agents has been shown to improve by increasing model parameters, dataset size, and compute. This has been demonstrated in domains from robotics to video games, when generative learning objectives on offline datasets (pre-training) are used to model an agent&#8217;s behavior (imitation learning) or their environment (world modeling). This paper characterizes the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":null,"msr_publishername":"","msr_publisher_other":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_edition":"","msr_editors":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_issue":"","msr_journal":"","msr_number":"","msr_organization":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_page_range_start":"","msr_page_range_end":"","msr_series":"","msr_volume":"","msr_copyright":"","msr_conference_name":"ICML 2025","msr_doi":"","msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_mag_id":"","msr_pubmed_id":"","msr_other_authors":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_award":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_institution":"","msr_host":"","msr_version":"","msr_duration":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":null,"msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_s2_match_type":"","msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_published_date":"2024-11-1","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_notes":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_conference_url":"","msr_journal_url":"","msr_s2_pdf_url":"","msr_year":0,"msr_citation_count":0,"msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_s2_match_confidence":0,"msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":true,"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_pub_ids":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":null,"footnotes":""},"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13556],"msr-publication-type":[193716],"msr-publisher":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[246691],"msr-conference":[260284],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-1106502","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-locale-en_us","msr-field-of-study-computer-science"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2024-11-1","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"url","viewUrl":"false","id":"false","title":"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2411.04434","label_id":"252679","label":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_citation_count":0,"msr_citation_count_updated":"","msr_s2_paper_id":"","msr_influential_citations":0,"msr_reference_count":0,"msr_arxiv_id":"","msr_s2_author_ids":[],"msr_s2_open_access":false,"msr_s2_pdf_url":null,"msr_attachments":[],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"guest","value":"tim-pearce","user_id":1090554,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=tim-pearce"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Tabish Rashid","user_id":41784,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Tabish Rashid"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Dave Bignell","user_id":38320,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Dave Bignell"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Raluca Stevenson","user_id":37392,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Raluca Stevenson"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Sam Devlin","user_id":37550,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Sam Devlin"},{"type":"user_nicename","value":"Katja Hofmann","user_id":32468,"rest_url":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=Katja Hofmann"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_event":[1140057],"msr_group":[583324,702211,1057371,1142579],"msr_project":[1172025,669597],"publication":[],"video":[],"msr-tool":[],"msr_publication_type":"inproceedings","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":1172025,"post_title":"WHAM","post_name":"wham","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2026-05-26 08:27:21","post_modified":"2026-05-26 08:47:09","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/project\/wham\/","post_excerpt":"Unlocking new forms of creative expression and ushering in the future of interactive media&nbsp; World and Human Action Models, or WHAM for short, are a family of generative AI models that capture both the environment (\u201cworld\u201d) and human actions to produce interactive, coherent sequences of visuals and controller actions. Developed as part of the Muse research program, WHAM presents&nbsp;a new design&nbsp;material, unlocking new forms of creative expression and ushering in the future of interactive media.&nbsp;&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/1172025"}]}},{"ID":669597,"post_title":"Project Paidia: a Microsoft Research &amp; Ninja Theory Collaboration","post_name":"project-paidia","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2020-08-03 07:00:29","post_modified":"2024-04-03 10:45:51","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/project\/project-paidia\/","post_excerpt":"One goal of Project Paidia, a collaborative research project, is to drive state of the art research in reinforcement learning to enable game agents that learn to collaborate with human players.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/669597"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1106502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1106502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106505,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/1106502\/revisions\/1106505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publisher?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=1106502"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new-cm-edgedigital.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=1106502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}