Active Inference Institute

"Active Inference Goes to School. The Importance of Active Learning in the Age of Large Language Models" Laura Desirée Di Paolo, Ben White, Avel GUÉNIN--CARLUT, Axel Constant, and Andy Clark https://osf.io/preprints/osf/zwa83 Human learning essentially involves embodied interactions with the material world. But our worlds now include increasing numbers of powerful and (apparently) disembodied generative AIs. In what follows we ask how best to understand these new (somewhat “alien”, because of their disembodied nature) resources and how to incorporate them in our educational practices. We focus on methodologies that encourage exploration and embodied interactions with ‘prepared’ material environments, such as the carefully organised settings of Montessori education. Using the Active Inference Framework, we approach our questions by thinking about human learning as epistemic foraging and prediction error minimization. We end by arguing that generative AIs should figure naturally as new elements in prepared learning environments by facilitating sequences of precise prediction error enabling trajectories of self-correction. In these ways we anticipate new synergies between (apparently) disembodied and (essentially) embodied forms of intelligence. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: 31daffdf373d2e61 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

"Order and change in art: towards an active inference account of aesthetic experience" Sander Van de Cruys, Jacopo Frascaroli and Karl Friston Published:18 December 2023 https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0411 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.0411 How to account for the power that art holds over us? Why do artworks touch us deeply, consoling, transforming or invigorating us in the process? In this paper, we argue that an answer to this question might emerge from a fecund framework in cognitive science known as predictive processing (a.k.a. active inference). We unpack how this approach connects sense-making and aesthetic experiences through the idea of an ‘epistemic arc’, consisting of three parts (curiosity, epistemic action and aha experiences), which we cast as aspects of active inference. We then show how epistemic arcs are built and sustained by artworks to provide us with those satisfying experiences that we tend to call ‘aesthetic’. Next, we defuse two key objections to this approach; namely, that it places undue emphasis on the cognitive component of our aesthetic encounters—at the expense of affective aspects—and on closure and uncertainty minimization (order)—at the expense of openness and lingering uncertainty (change). We show that the approach offers crucial resources to account for the open-ended, free and playful behaviour inherent in aesthetic experiences. The upshot is a promising but deflationary approach, both philosophically informed and psychologically sound, that opens new empirical avenues for understanding our aesthetic encounters. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: b87e851199bc9a7d Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

"Bayesian Model-Based Cognition: The Requirement Equation" Robert Worden Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: 2e9de98c977e4d4e Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Governable Spaces Democratic Design for Online Life by Nathan Schneider (Author), Darija Medic (Illustrator) https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520393943/governable-spaces When was the last time you participated in an election for an online group chat or sat on a jury for a dispute about a controversial post? Platforms nudge users to tolerate nearly all-powerful admins, moderators, and "benevolent dictators for life." In Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider argues that the internet has been plagued by a phenomenon he calls "implicit feudalism": a bias, both cultural and technical, for building communities as fiefdoms. The consequences of this arrangement matter far beyond online spaces themselves, as feudal defaults train us to give up on our communities' democratic potential, inclining us to be more tolerant of autocratic tech CEOs and authoritarian tendencies among politicians. But online spaces could be sites of a creative, radical, and democratic renaissance. Using media archaeology, political theory, and participant observation, Schneider shows how the internet can learn from governance legacies of the past to become a more democratic medium, responsive and inventive unlike anything that has come before. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: 3d0d669e7f7388f6 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Witness the power of message passing as we guide you through the process of building a drone in real-time using our toolbox RxInfer.jl. Whether you're a novice intrigued by neuroscience or a seasoned researcher, this immersive demonstration promises to unveil the practical applications of active inference, revolutionizing our approach to autonomous systems. https://github.com/ReactiveBayes/RxInfer.jl https://rxinfer.ml/ https://lazydynamics.com/ ---- Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: 9c601b76db4f88f8 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

"Meta-Representations as Representations of Processes" Ryota Kanai, Ryota Takatsuki, and Ippei Fujisawa https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zg27u In this study, we explore how the notion of meta-representations in Higher-Order Theories (HOT) of consciousness can be implemented in computational models. HOT suggests that consciousness emerges from meta-representations, which are representations of first-order sensory representations. However, translating this abstract concept into a concrete computational model, such as those used in artificial intelligence, presents a theoretical challenge. For example, a simplistic interpretation of meta-representation as a representation of representation makes the notion rather trivial and ubiquitous. Here, we propose a refined interpretation of meta-representations. Contrary to the simplistic view of meta-representations as mere transformations of the first-order representational states or confidence estimates, we argue that meta-representations are representations of the processes that generate first-order representations. This presents a process-oriented view whereby meta-representations capture the qualitative aspect of how sensory information is transformed into first-order representations. To concretely illustrate and operationalize thus formulated notion of meta-representation, we constructed "meta-networks" designed to explicitly model meta-representations within deep learning architectures. Specifically, we constructed meta-networks by implementing autoencoders of first-order neural networks. In this architecture, the latent spaces embedding those first-order networks correspond to the meta-representations of first-order networks. By applying meta-networks to embed neural networks trained to encode visual and auditory datasets, we show that the meta-representations of first-order networks successfully capture the qualitative aspects of those networks by separating the visual and auditory networks in the meta-representation space. We argue that such meta-representations would be useful for quantitatively compare and contrast the qualitative differences of computational processes. While whether such meta-representational systems exist in the human brain remains an open question, this formulation of meta-representation offers a new empirically testable hypothesis that there are brain regions that represent the processes of transforming a representation in one brain region to a representation in another brain region. Furthermore, this form of meta-representations might underlie our ability to describe the qualitative aspect of sensory experience or qualia. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: ebb7a10035fed94d Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Juan Diego Bogotá "What could come before time? Intertwining affectivity and temporality at the basis of intentionality" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11097-024-09973-y The enactive approach to cognition and the phenomenological tradition have in common a wide conception of ‘intentionality’. Within these frameworks, intentionality is understood as a general openness to the world. For classical phenomenologists, the most basic subjective structure that allows for such openness is time-consciousness. Some enactivists, while inspired by the phenomenological tradition, have nevertheless argued that affectivity is more basic, being that which gives rise to the temporal flow of consciousness. In this paper, I assess the relationship between temporality and affectivity from both a phenomenological and an enactive perspective. I argue that, as opposed to the classical phenomenological view (which favours temporality), and to the enactive view (which favours affectivity), we must take affectivity and temporality as co-emergent. Jointly, affectivity and temporality constitute the basic structures of intentionality. Additionally, using examples from phenomenological psychopathology, I conclude that all intentionality is defined by an anticipatory and affective structure that gives rise to general feelings related to our bodily possibilities in the world. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: 7377a165134b4ae7 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Generalized decomposition of multivariate information Thomas Varley https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10843128/ Since its introduction, the partial information decomposition (PID) has emerged as a powerful, information-theoretic technique useful for studying the structure of (potentially higher-order) interactions in complex systems. Despite its utility, the applicability of the PID is restricted by the need to assign elements as either “sources” or “targets”, as well as the specific structure of the mutual information itself. Here, I introduce a generalized information decomposition that relaxes the source/target distinction while still satisfying the basic intuitions about information. This approach is based on the decomposition of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, and consequently allows for the analysis of any information gained when updating from an arbitrary prior to an arbitrary posterior. As a result, any information-theoretic measure that can be written as a linear combination of Kullback-Leibler divergences admits a decomposition in the style of Williams and Beer, including the total correlation, the negentropy, and the mutual information as special cases. This paper explores how the generalized information decomposition can reveal novel insights into existing measures, as well as the nature of higher-order synergies. We show that synergistic information is intimately related to the well-known Tononi-Sporns-Edelman (TSE) complexity, and that synergistic information requires a similar integration/segregation balance as a high TSE complexity. Finally, I end with a discussion of how this approach fits into other attempts to generalize the PID and the possibilities for empirical applications. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/ Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams CSID: ccd5b36fe12011c2 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Active Inference With Empathy Mechanism for Socially Behaved Artificial Agents in Diverse Situations Tadayuki Matsumura, Hiroyuki Mizuno, Kanako Esaki 松村忠幸, 水野弘之, 江﨑佳奈子 https://direct.mit.edu/artl/article/d... This article proposes a method for an artificial agent to behave in a social manner. Although defining proper social behavior is difficult because it differs from situation to situation, the agent following the proposed method adaptively behaves appropriately in each situation by empathizing with the surrounding others. The proposed method is achieved by incorporating empathy into active inference. We evaluated the proposed method regarding control of autonomous mobile robots in diverse situations. From the evaluation results, an agent controlled by the proposed method could behave more adaptively socially than an agent controlled by the standard active inference in the diverse situations. In the case of two agents, the agent controlled with the proposed method behaved in a social way that reduced the other agent’s travel distance by 13.7% and increased the margin between the agents by 25.8%, even though it increased the agent’s travel distance by 8.2%. Also, the agent controlled with the proposed method behaved more socially when it was surrounded by altruistic others but less socially when it was surrounded by selfish others. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInfer... Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins...

Lachlan Kent "Mental gravity: Modelling the embodied self on the physical environment" A discussion of two recent papers proposing a new theory proposing that phenomenological, cognitive, and affective states of an embodied self are structured according to the experience of physical gravity (i.e., internal gravity model). First paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Mental gravity: Modelling the embodied self on the physical environment Second paper: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/9/1275 Mental Gravity: Depression as Spacetime Curvature of the Self, Mind, and Brain Anna Ciaunica joins for discussion. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins...

Narrative Fallacy and Other Limitations of Psychodynamic Case Formulation https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/znxs5 Alexey Tolchinsky This paper describes a phenomenon of narrative fallacy in psychodynamic psychotherapy and makes a case that it is likely related to therapists’ working memory limitations. The impact of narrative fallacy on model complexity is examined with a focus on further improving the efficacy of clinical treatment. The specifics of the psychodynamic meaning-making process gravitating toward searching for causal or teleological explanations are reviewed. Tentative perspectives on these processes from the standpoint of active inference and neuropsychology are presented. This paper also examines the issues with verifiability in the psychodynamic hypothesis testing process with a focus on the Barnum/Forer effect. Preliminary proposals are formulated to help mitigate the impact of these issues on clinical practice. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins...

Open Source AI: The truth is the first casualty in war https://alignmentlab.ai/ Austin Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins..

"The empirical status of predictive coding and active inference" Rowan Hodson, Marishka Mehta, Ryan Smith https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Research on predictive processing models has focused largely on two specific algorithmic theories: Predictive Coding for perception and Active Inference for decision-making. While these interconnected theories possess broad explanatory potential, they have only recently begun to receive direct empirical evaluation. Here, we review recent studies of Predictive Coding and Active Inference with a focus on evaluating the degree to which they are empirically supported. For Predictive Coding, we find that existing empirical evidence offers modest support. However, some positive results can also be explained by alternative feedforward (e.g., feature detection-based) models. For Active Inference, most empirical studies have focused on fitting these models to behavior as a means of identifying and explaining individual or group differences. While Active Inference models tend to explain behavioral data reasonably well, there has not been a focus on testing empirical validity of active inference theory per se, which would require formal comparison to other models (e.g., non-Bayesian or model-free reinforcement learning models). This review suggests that, while promising, a number of specific research directions are still necessary to evaluate the empirical adequacy and explanatory power of these algorithms. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins...

Adrian Bejan: "The Evolution of Freedom" https://mems.duke.edu/faculty/adrian-... Embark on a thought-provoking journey as we delve into more profound insights with Dr. Adrian Bejan. Dr. Bejan is the internationally acclaimed physicist who discovered the Constructal Law In our first gueststeam, ActInf GuestStream 066.1 ~ Adrian Bejan, "The Physics of Life: How to Predict Evolution" • ActInf GuestStream 066.1 ~ Adrian Bej... we learned how to apply the Constructal Law to predict design in nature. In this second episode, Dr. Bejan will explain the Constructal Law through the lens of freedom. You can expect a captivating livestream event that promises to expand your intellectual curiosity with a liberating understanding of the natural evolution freedom plays within flow configurations. Join us to: Discover how the laws of physics govern the evolution of freedom. Gain a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and human systems. Learn how societal structures and governance mechanisms evolve to optimize the distribution and accessibility of freedom within the constraints of the environment. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 53af04c905cb674b Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Practical Collective Sensemaking Jerry Michalski, founder of Open Global Mind https://openglobalmind.com/ Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 02fffdcf8fa0f3bd Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Marshall McLuhan and Project 69: Understanding Media, not by accident but design. Andrew McLuhan is founder and director of The McLuhan Institute, founded in 2017 to preserve and continue the unique McLuhan tradition of exploration and media study. Andrew writes and teaches, gives speeches and presentations, and consults based on McLuhan work in studying and predicting the human effects of innovation. Links to social media, newsletter, shop, at https://themcluhaninstitute.com/ / amicusadastra https://mcluhan.substack.com/ Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: c3d53f411b298f6d Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Introduction to Bayesian mechanics: paths-based formalism (part 2) Richard Servajean Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 4408322dce95ff40 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Introduction to Bayesian mechanics: state-based formalism (part 1) Richard Servajean Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 2197506e3f331655 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Distrusting the policy: how inference over action shapes our experience of temporality in flow states and life more broadly https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/b3h2e Darius Parvizi-Wayne Time is a remarkably bizarre phenomenon. It is both objectively measurable and subjectively felt, and yet it is fundamentally fleeting, in so far as any attempts to demarcate the present are always tardy. Furthermore, the 'now' seems phenomenologically thick, constituted by the just-past and the about-to- happen in a manner described first by James (1890) and Husserl (2019). Although theoretical accounts of the structure of time-consciousness have begun to proliferate in the active inference framework (cf. Albarracin et al., 2022, 2023; Bogotá, 2023; Bogotá & Djebbaria, 2023), few models exist for the passage of time per se. The most prominent attempt comes from Hohwy et al. (2015), who ground the flow of time in a distrusting of the present hypothesis about the cause of sensory data. In this talk, Darius Parvizi-Wayne argues that a model which roots temporal flows in the dynamics of action policy selection, rather than perceptual inference, is more consonant with the phenomenal nature of the passage of time. This analysis begins with an explication of subjective time in flow states, to which this action-centric model is particularly well-suited, before expanding into a theoretical account of time-consciousness more broadly. Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: ad3de0b44f6e00b9 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

d20 is a Discord bot that allows communities to experience how communication and governance interact in an LLM-mediated environment. Communicate: d20 moderates the group's governance communication through different "culture modules" - playfully modifying users' messages to cultivate diverse interaction environments for participants. Interact: Groups can come together to embark on a governance “quest”, where they make lightweight decisions about the their group and experience varied mechanisms of decision-making. The team working on this project will give a presentation on the background of the project, overview the development process, conduct short interactive demos, and explore practical applications and complementary research questions. Website: https://metagov.github.io/d20-governa... Guest: Cent Hosten Janita Chalam Hazel Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 0ca0e8840b75a2d0 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

In 2021, Raja et al. published ‘The Markov Blanket Trick’, which argued that “the FEP [Free Energy Principle] is not the general principle it is claimed to be, and that active inference is not the all-encompassing process theory it is purported to be either.” This led to a flurry of responses from within the active inference community, with commentaries published by Friston, Ramstead and Albarracin & Pitliya, amongst others. In this episode of Active Inference Insights, we unpick this controversial paper with the help of its primary author, Vicente Raja, and Jeff Beck, a computational neuroscientist studying probabilistic reasoning in humans and animals. Vicente Raja https://www.rotman.uwo.ca/portfolio-i... https://twitter.com/DioVicen Jeff Beck https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-beck... Darius Parvizi-Wayne https://twitter.com/dparviziwayne Active Inference Insititute https://www.activeinference.org https://twitter.com/InferenceActive CSID: 53988973a9e59707 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Whether you’re into machine elves or body maps, this is the conversation for you. In this sixth episode of Active Inference Insights, Darius & Adam Safron roam the mysterious wonderlands of psychedelics, evolution, extended minds and much, much more. Adam Safron https://scholar.google.com/citations?... https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/safron https://twitter.com/adamsafron? Darius Parvizi-Wayne https://twitter.com/dparviziwayne Active Inference Insititute https://www.activeinference.org https://twitter.com/InferenceActive CSID: 4342957786d64aff Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Projects: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... Preparation: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... Measurement: https://coda.io/@active- inference-ins... https://www.activeinference.org/ CSID: 584832d08ed8cf08 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 05e09a07335e5831 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co

Active Inference Institute information: Website: https://activeinference.org/ Twitter: / inferenceactive Discord: / discord YouTube: / activeinference Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-ins... CSID: 805a21a56df95932 Content Managed by ContentSafe.co