June 2023 Newsletter ✂️🎨🧭 Active Inference Institute

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

Institute scale

• Tomorrow June 30th at 17 UTC, we will livestream the second quarterly roundtable update of 2023 (watch/rewatch here). This video will provide many updates on the proceedings of the last few months at the Institute, directions for the coming months, and affordances for your participation.
• Applied Active Inference Symposium in August 2023 — This year, we're thrilled to announce that the theme of our symposium will be: “Enacting Ecosystems of Shared Intelligence: Active Inference as a Cognitive Kernel”. If you are keen to contribute your expertise a presenter (e.g. to give a talk or workshop) and enact a part of our dynamic ecosystem, we warmly invite you to reach out to us at [Contact the Institute](site-contact) . A more formal call for presenters will be coming soon.
• We are applying in the coming months 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. Please get in touch with us if you would be interested in exploring a partnership here!
• Our Officers are continuing to work towards obtaining 501c3 tax exempt status for the Active Inference Institute.
• 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 continue development of an AII qualification system that will be utilized to validate the educational results of participants.
• 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 excited to announce a new online class co-organized by Kairos Research and the Active Inference Institute, "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 two ongoing cohorts of the Parr et al. Active Inference Textbook Group. To register for the ongoing cohort, please see here for more information and the Textbook Group registration form, or check out our group’s shared niche directly.
• The Chris Fields course on "Physics as Information Processing" is active. There are 6 Lectures, alternating with 6 participatory discussions. All materials and information on the course can be found on our website.
• We had many exciting livestreams in June and more are coming up in July:
• June 1 at 22 UTC, GuestStream #015.3 with Bobby Azarian on “The Teleological Stance: The Free Energy Principle as a Basis for a Scientific Self-Help System”
• June 13 at 0 UTC, GuestStream #044.1 with Naotsugu Tsuchiya and Hayato Saigo “Using category theory to assess the relationship between consciousness and integrated information theory”
• June 19 at 18 UTC, GuestStream #045.1 with Maxwell Ramstead and Mahault Albarracin “The inner screen model of consciousness: applying the free energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience“
• 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). There is also a special Journal announcement below.

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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