September 2023 Newsletter 🎃🐧🥼Active Inference Institute

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

To see these updates in video form, see our 3rd quarterly roundtable video of 2023, from September 29.

Institute scale

• We submitted 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. We are grateful for the many discussions and collaborations fostered through the submission process, and especially to the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington who filed our proposal as the submitting organization.
• 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! We would love to have engaged and diverse participants service in this role, from many areas of the ecosystem.
• The Activities page has up-to-date information on all the ongoing projects at the Institute. We have about 10 synchronous meetings of different types throughout the week, and also links to asynchronous documents where work in performed — there are many ways to learn and apply Active Inference by contributing to research, textbook groups, livestreams, and more.
• We have submitted our Form 1023 and soon expect and prefer ourselves to be a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Once this status is achieved we will increase awareness in the niche about the potential to support the ecosystem through philanthropic means. Until then, if you have interest in advising or otherwise being involved with the development of philanthropic programs at Active Inference Institute, please get in touch!

Education

• We are finishing the Chris Fields course "Physics as Information Processing" in the month of October with the final lecture and participatory discussion. 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 have started our 5th Cohort for the Parr, Pezzulo, Friston 2022 Active Inference Textbook Group. To register, please see here for more information and the Textbook Group registration form, or check out our group’s shared niche directly.
• We had many exciting livestreams this month. Here are just a few highlights:
• September 1, “Active Inference in String Diagrams” with Sean Tull
• September 19, "Working with Gerald Edelman" with Karl Friston, Andrew Schwartz, 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 work; 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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