October 2023 Newsletter 🚀🎨🌟 Active Inference Institute

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

Institute scale

• The 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 for 2024, please fill out this form! We would love to have the service of engaged and diverse participants 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 (regular meetings and links to documents). There are many ways to learn and apply Active Inference by contributing to research, textbook groups, livestreams, ontology, and more.

Education

• We are now finished with the Chris Fields course "Physics as Information Processing". All materials and information on the course can be found on our website. In the coming weeks we will publish the proceedings of the course, and share some thoughts on how work in this area will continue. If you are interested in participating in the continuation of this work in 2024, please get in touch.
• This week we are finishing up with 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 can be found here.
• We are active with the 4th and 5th cohorts of 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:
• GuestStream #060.1 ~ Kristen Whittle, “Reflections and implications of a naïve attitude to architecture”
• GuestStream #061.1 ~ Shagor Rahman, “Myth of objectivity and the origin of symbols”
• GuestStream #062.1 ~ Michael Carl, “Deep temporal Models of the Translation Process”
• The Journal project focus on architecture evolving to address scaling concerns, and define use cases for Editors roles. 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

• 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.
• A new paper from Daniel Friedman: “Cognitive Sovereignty & Active Inference in the State of Exception”.
• A new paper from Scientific Advisory Board member Anatoly Levenchuk “Toward an Ontology for Third Generation Systems Thinking”
• 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. All backgrounds, time zones, time availability, and level of familiarity with Active Inference are welcome and encouraged at the Institute.
• 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).
• 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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