2023 Quarterly Roundtable #4

Hello and welcome everyone. It's December 8th, 2023, and we're here in 2023, quarterly roundtable number four at the Active Inference Institute. Let us do it. Welcome to the ActInf Institute. We're a participatory online institute that is communicating, learning, and practicing applied Active Inference. You can find us at links on this slide. This is a recorded and an archived live stream, so please provide us with feedback so we can improve our work. All backgrounds and perspectives are welcome, and we'll follow video etiquette for live stream. Today in the quarterly roundtable that closes 23, we'll go over first the Institute scale, then the Organizational Unit scale with Eduactive and Reinference, and finally close with some thoughts on 24. So before we go any further, Alex and Blue, do either of you want to say hi or share anything or just give any overall thoughts that you don't see coming up later on? Yeah, I mean, just that the year was just so epic and really, like, we're still climbing. We're still in the exponential growth phase of our colony. So it's been amazing and awesome to work with you guys and the Institute and just watch it grow and develop and all the new things that have bubbled up. It's been awesome. Thank you, Lou. Alex? Yeah, maybe some idea, but from current position, we are seeing and considering, like, another scale of ecosystem scale and, like, more broad field, more and more people, educational institutions and startups. Actually, last time, everything is developing and evolving, and we are in a good place. Thank you. All right. So either of you, please just raise your hand if you want to add anything on a slide or we'll move on. So first to some updates at the organizational scale. Well, it was just in August of this year when, with many co-authors, we brought together this document on the Active Inference Institute and the ecosystem, and Figure 1 is still operative and totally in effect we'll be talking more about that as we go. But during this year, we did reach this milestone or this checkpoint of being able to even assemble the team and the work this way. So this was a big milestone for us and also gives us something like a map for the next phase. I'd like to thank our first cohort of the Board of Directors, Raph Kaufman, John Klippinger, myself, Dean Tickles, Blue, Knight, and Mike Smith. Great work, as well as to the first cohort of officers, us here, and the second cohort of the Scientific Advisory Board listed here. Also, just a broader and grander and more diffusive thanks to everybody who's engaging. If you're listening to it, you are. So it wouldn't be the way it is without everything being the way it is. So it's been a great year, and we're really excited for what's to come. If you're interested, up until December 15th, we will be accepting applications for the Scientific Advisory Board. It's not an active inference test. It's about people who are beginner to expert in active inference, who are looking to make a contribution to the Institute in this scientific and advisory capacity. It would be awesome to see an engaged, diverse, and global group, as during 2024, we expect to bring the SAB through on from where it was to how it will be next. And that's going to be very exciting, differentiating different channels of participating. And SAB members, not just somebody who is joining a textbook group, or not just somebody who's facilitating a project. So what is it that differentiates that? That's what we want to explore. If you want to be part of that work in this phase, then go to the website here and check for more information. About our nonprofit status. Well, last roundtable, we updated that we had submitted our Form 1023 to the USA IRS. So our tax-exempt status as a 501c3 is pending. In the last few weeks, we've set up a bank account. So we now can actually receive fiat financial donations. If you're interested in just spontaneously feeling like you'd like to donate, right now,…