December 2022 Newsletter 🐜🐝🏠 Active Inference Institute

Thanks to everyone for an amazing year, and we look forward to your engagement in 2023

Institute scale

• We had our Quarterly Roundtable #4, providing a video review of Institute activities in 2022 and directions for 2023.
• If you are interested in potentially undertaking an Officer role in 2023, particularly if you have experience working with nonprofit agencies and/or experience in finance (e.g. in Treasurer position), please fill out this form.
• Our Scientific Advisory Board is an informal group that provides the Institute with insight and expertise. If you are interested in joining the Scientific Advisory Board in 2023, please fill out this form.
• Regular project meetings for 2023 will begin in the week of January 2nd. The Activities page has timing information on all the ongoing projects at the Institute.

Education

• On December 31st at 18 UTC, we will have an end-of-2022 review stream, going over the 87 livestreams from this year! It should be an awesome recap of the conceptual advances that the field made in 2022, and provide space for reflection as we head into 2023.
• If you would like to join the Active Inference Textbook Group (next cohort starts in January 2023), please see here for more information and the Textbook Group registration form.
• In January we will start the 3rd cohort of a participatory “Systems Engineering Intensive” (SEI). During these 4 weeks we will discover universal project frameworks based on the third generation of systems approach. These frameworks will help you to reduce uncertainty in your current projects and align the generative model of team members. For joining the study group please fill up this registration form.
• The Active Inference Journal has been making tremendous progress in transcribing and archiving the texts of livestreams. Eventually we will have augmented transcripts and translations for every livestream, and already we have made significant progress in working through our backlog of 200+ livestreams. To stay updated with the current state, 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

• Several Institute participants released a new research paper in December 2022: “The Free Energy Principle & Active Inference: a Systematic Literature Analysis”. We analyzed ActInf/FEP literature in terms of authorship, citation patterns, and term usage. The project has an interactive shared space site and a Github repository, and now will continue to be developed as an Institute project.
• The Active Blockference project continues on an exciting path, curating implementations of Active Inference and integrating them with the complex systems simulation framework cadCAD.

How to participate in 2023

• See all participation onboarding information at the dedicated site.
• 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 (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 (e.g., study groups, livestreams, marketing activities, publications, symposiums, applied research, etc.). If you are willing to join us, see more information and fill up the Volunteer registration form here.
• Interns are Volunteers who are looking for a more intense and structured experience with the Institute. For the duration of the internship, Interns will engage in both educational and research activities. 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.

Active Inference Institute

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