mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

When World Models Lie: Adaptive Safety Analysis Under Wrong Imaginations

arXiv 2609.34300 ↗First posted 28 Sep 2026cs.RO cs.AI cs.SYcited by 0

On the map: World models → Latent predictive world models also fits: World model security and GUI agents

Abstract (arXiv)

World models offer a powerful substrate for safety reasoning in high-dimensional robotic systems, but they are also fallible: their predictions can be biased, miscalibrated, or confidently wrong. This creates a central challenge for latent-space safety filters, which often learn Hamilton-Jacobi safety value functions on the dynamics of a world model. If the world model is incorrect, the resulting value function can inherit its errors and produce overconfident safety estimates. Existing latent safety filters often rely on auxiliary signals such as ensemble disagreement or value-target consistency residuals for adaptation, but these signals can remain small even when the world model's predictions deviate from observations. We propose an adaptive latent safety filter that calibrates safety reasoning using directly observed world-model error. Our method uses Adaptive Conformal Inference to construct online uncertainty sets from discrepancies between predicted and observation-inferred latent states, then evaluates safety pessimistically by minimizing the learned value function over these sets. This allows the filter to remain minimally conservative when the world model is accurate, while becoming more cautious when observations reveal model mismatch. We provide a finite-time coverage guarantee for the adaptive uncertainty radius. Through simulation and hardware experiments, we show that our method significantly reduces failures relative to state-of-the-art latent safety filters while preserving task completion.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Latent predictive world models, one of 11 directions in World models. Builds on 13 of its 22 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2026.

Builds on

13 of 22 references.

References · 13

  1. 2025π0.5: a Vision-Language-Action Model with Open-World Generalizationcited by 1,761
  2. 2023Mastering Diverse Domains through World Modelscited by 1,253
  3. 2023Robots That Ask For Help: Uncertainty Alignment for Large Language Model Plannerscited by 308
  4. 2025Gemini Robotics: Bringing AI into the Physical Worldcited by 83
  5. 2025Robotic World Model: A Neural Network Simulator for Robust Policy Optimization in Roboticscited by 51
  6. 2025Generalizing Safety Beyond Collision-Avoidance via Latent-Space Reachability Analysiscited by 45
  7. 2025Uncertainty-aware Latent Safety Filters for Avoiding Out-of-Distribution Failurescited by 33
  8. 2026Foundational World Models Accurately Detect Bimanual Manipulator Failurescited by 11
  9. 2025How to Train Your Latent Control Barrier Function: Smooth Safety Filtering Under Hard-to-Model Constraintscited by 9
  10. 2026Feedback World Model Enables Precise Guidance of Diffusion Policycited by 9
  11. 2026Hallucination in World Models is Predictable and Preventablecited by 8
  12. 2026Biased Dreams: Limitations to Epistemic Uncertainty Quantification in Latent Dynamics Modelscited by 5
1 more
  1. 2026Safe Control using Learned Safety Filters and Adaptive Conformal Inferencecited by 2

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  1. 2025How Well Do Latent World Models Understand Partially Observable Safety Constraints?
  2. 2024Zero-shot Safety Prediction for Autonomous Robots with Foundation World Models
  3. 2026Modeling Latent Disturbances for Robust Decision-Making in World Models
  4. 2026Rethinking World Models for Safety-Critical Embodied Systems
  5. 2026Learning from World Feedback: Why Model Uncertainty Fails as a Risk Signal in Model-Based RL
  6. 2025AnySafe: Adapting Latent Safety Filters at Runtime via Safety Constraint Parameterization in the Latent Space
  7. 2025Towards Safe Robot Foundation Models Using Inductive Biases
  8. 2026FARM: Reading Failure Signals from the Internal Predictive States of a Frozen Robotic World Model