arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

A Control Theory of Predictability in Latent World Models

arXiv:2607. 10362v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Latent world models are trained to predict future states in a learned representation and are then deployed inside a planner that selects actions by simulating them forward.

By Hanzhe You, Yonggang Zhang, Maohao Ran, Zhiqin Yang, Zhenyuan Zhang, Wei Xue, Jun Song, Xinmei Tian, Yike Guo
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 9

How Long, Not How Close: A Learned Temporal Metric for Planning in Latent World Models

The paper introduces TEMPO, a temporal-distance planning objective that augments latent world models by learning a map of the frozen latent space where distances correspond to the number of environment steps between states. TEMPO blends this learned temporal distance into the planner’s cost, requiring no additional rewards or policies, and adds negligible computational overhead. Experiments on eleven simulated environments show that TEMPO consistently improves planner performance across all goal distances, notably raising LeWM’s success rate from 36% to 99% on the TwoRoom task.

By Lama Moukheiber, Haotian Xue, Yongxin Chen
arXiv Machine Learning
Oct 15

One-Step Prediction Fidelity Is a Poor Proxy for Planning Performance in JEPA World Models

The paper challenges the common practice of selecting latent world models based on one‑step prediction loss, arguing that this metric poorly predicts planning performance. Using a frozen‑decoder protocol, the authors decompose one‑step error into encoder‑inherent and predictor‑added components and evaluate goal‑conditioned planning across three continuous‑control environments. Their experiments show that improvements in one‑step fidelity do not correlate with planning success, with correlation coefficients near zero and inconsistent exchange rates across tasks.

By Joshua Cheung, Zhang He