August 2023 Newsletter 🧟🌪️🥑Active Inference Institute

Welcome to the August 2023 updates from the Active Inference Institute.

Read on to see updates from the Institute & opportunities for your engagement.

Institute scale

• We published “The Active Inference Institute and Active Inference Ecosystem”, a massively collaborative effort that brings together many of our Institute developments and plans. We look forward to your feedback on the paper, and of course continued engagement in the ecosystem.
• The 3rd Applied Active Inference Symposium took place on August 22nd 2023 — “Enacting Ecosystems of Shared Intelligence: Active Inference as a Cognitive Kernel”. All information on the Symposium Program and exciting presentations can be found here (rewatch the 1st interval and 2nd interval).
• We are finalizing our application for the NSF grant “Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE)”, for the Institute to serve as a managing organization in the growing Active Inference ecosystem. Applying for this award required us to address many foundational aspects of the Institute. This process has already helped us to clarify and enact a path toward sustainability as an entity and ecosystem, regardless of whether or not we are selected for the award.
• We are active with our Scientific Advisory Board, an informal group that provides the Institute with insight and expertise. If you are interested in joining the Scientific Advisory Board for 2024, please fill out this form
• The Activities page has updated timing information on all the ongoing projects at the Institute. We have about 10 synchronous meetings of different types throughout the week — there are many ways to learn and apply Active Inference by contributing to research projects, textbook groups, livestreams, and more.

Education

• We are active in the Chris Fields course "Physics as Information Processing". There are 6 Lectures, alternating with 6 participatory discussions. All materials and information on the course can be found on our website.
• We are active in the course "Constructing cultural landscapes: Active Inference for the Social Sciences" with Avel Guénin-Carlut, Ben White, Mahault Albarracin, Lorena Sganzerla, Daniel Friedman. All information on the course and registration can be found here.
• We will be starting Cohort 5 for the Parr, Pezzulo, Friston 2022 Active Inference Textbook Group in the coming weeks. To register for the current or next cohort, please see here for more information and the Textbook Group registration form, or check out our group’s shared niche directly.
• Video Improvements Project (VIP) was launched and the first participants were onboarded to a shared informational niche. We will work on a weekly rhythm of synchronous project meetings with asynchronous works on tasks.
• We had many exciting livestreams in August. Here are just of few of the upcoming streams in September:
• September 1, “Active Inference in String Diagrams” with Sean Tull
• September 19, "Working with Gerald Edelman" with Karl Friston and Cheng-Ming Chuong
• The Active Inference Journal continues to produce augmented transcripts and translations for every livestream, as a resource for education and research. To stay updated with the current state of the Journal, see the Github repository of the Active Inference Journal (and if you are interested to see or improve on our methodology, see the Github repository of the Journal Utilities).

Research

• The Active Blockference project continues on an exciting path, curating implementations of Active Inference and integrating them with the complex systems simulation framework cadCAD.
• We continue development on the Active Inference Ontology, bringing accessibility, rigor, and applicability to our growing ecosystem.
• Our Interns are pursuing their interesting research and application directions.
• Let us know if you have any recent publications (papers, blogs, etc) that we may share in future newsletter updates.

How to participate in 2023

• See all participation onboarding information.
• Join the AII Discord to get involved with our community and join meetings in the voice chat.
• As a community-driven open science organization, we provide multiple opportunities for deepening your relationship with the Institute (Informal, Volunteer and Intern). All backgrounds, time zones, time availability, and level of familiarity with Active Inference are welcome and encouraged at AII.
• Volunteers are active learners who want to contribute to ongoing projects at the Institute. There is no limit to the type or number of projects that Volunteers can be involved in and drive —see more information and fill out the Volunteer registration form here.
• Interns are Volunteers who are looking for a more intense and structured experience with the Institute. Interns are assigned a mentor from the Institute. If you are interested in the internship, see more information and complete the internship registration form.

Let us know via reply to this email if you have any other ideas or questions.

Thank you for the regime of attention and see you around.

Active Inference Institute

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