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Before we go live…..

Active Inference Lab ~ Livestream Checklist

Go through the Checklist!

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Everyone & the audience Thanks you for this diligence!

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ActInfLab

Quarterly Roundtable

#3

August_3_2021

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Welcome to Active Inference Lab!

  • We are a participatory online lab that is communicating, learning, and practicing applied Active Inference.
    • www.activeinference.org
    • Twitter: @InferenceActive
    • Active.Inference@gmail.com
    • YouTube: youtube.com/c/ActiveInference
    • Keybase: @actinflab.public & @ActiveInference
  • This is a recorded & archived livestream – Please provide feedback so we can improve our work!
  • All backgrounds and perspectives welcome.
  • Video etiquette for Livestreams:
    • Mute, raise hand, respectful speech behavior, etc.

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AIL 2021 Quarterly #3

  1. Goals
    1. Update: Summarize the results of Active Inference Lab activity for a broad audience
    2. Motivate: Continue and amplify our call for participation through deep time
  2. Updates
    • Organizational Units
      1. .edu
      2. .comms
      3. .tools
    • #future
      • Next steps
      • Needs

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ActInfLab

Goals

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ActiveInference.org

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Broader communities

Active Inference

Learners & Practitioners

Active

Inference

Lab (2021)

.edu

.comms

.tools

Livestream

Body of Knowledge

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ActInfLab

Updates

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A Special Announcement:

    • ActInfLab has a steady state as a non-profit organization (officially registered in California, USA)!

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    • This registration as a non-profit organization is consistent with our Lab’s strategy to be a center of gravity for education and open-science research related to Active Inference, governing activities based on epistemic values.

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    • Registering as a non-profit provides us with new affordances & allows us to enact policy consistent with our preferences: to see the Active Inference community become as participatory, accessible, and productive as possible.

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Research Debt

Moving forward, the field of Active Inference needs to reduce Research Debt, and increase by orders of magnitude the number of people learning and applying the framework in their professional domains.

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Reference materials

Educational courses

Projects for “learn by doing”

Communities of practice/mentorship

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    • The non-profit registration updates the phenotype of our Lab and provides several new affordances as well as access to new niches:
      • We are now better able to scaffold long-term partnerships (through e.g. increased credibility, durability, recognizability, legibility).
      • As a legal non-profit entity, we can engage in collaborations with other legally-recognized entities.
      • We will be increasingly able to receive donations via legal means.
      • We will have access to apply for new kinds of grants as a Lab.
      • We will be able to better support Lab employees (part- and full-time) and other services we need payment for.
      • We will be able to provide improved onboarding and accessibility efforts.
    • At this point we are opening an invitation for participation from individuals with experience in:
      • Non-profit management
      • Lab management
      • Research program management
      • Grant applications
      • Legal & financial services
      • Cryptoeconomics, Crowdfunding, token engineering
      • Graphic design, UI/UX, website development
      • Collaborative tool application

Get in touch at ActiveInference@gmail.com

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Lab Advisory Board

    • ActInfLab will arrange activities to organize Lab Advisory board that will start operations this semester
    • Individuals with high expertise levels in their domain will be invited to join the board, or please contact us if you have interest
    • The following areas of Lab activities will be supervised by the board:
      • Legal
      • Education
      • Governance
      • Methodology
      • Research strategy
      • Application / Innovation
      • TBA

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ActInfLab

.edu

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.edu

  • Goal
    • Create a participatory and dynamic Active Inference Body of Knowledge
  • Progress/Actions
    • .edu
      • Working Ontology document now with ~90%+ language & citation coverage
    • Ontology Working Group
  • Next steps
    • Contributions on Terms, References, Languages
    • Progress on Ontology
      • Any ontology experts?
      • Interested in learning Ontology by doing?

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Q1 2021

Just a list of Core & supplemental English terms.

Expert help & Ontology Working Group

Q2-Q4 2021

  • Updating Term membership
  • Introduce References
  • Introduce Definitions
  • Introduce Translations

Core vs

Supplement

Ontology Working Group

https://www.ontologyportal.org/

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Working Ontology document

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Instructional and Interaction Design

  • How will we provide the affordance for people to learn Active Inference?

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  • How does Instructionism vs. Interactionism (ActInf Livestream #023) relate to course designs?

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  • How do we provide Applied Active Inference education for individuals of many different backgrounds?

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Get involved with .edu through project-based learning

  • Knowledge engineering
    • Language Translations
    • Definitions & References
    • Curriculum development
    • Ontology Working Group
      • Beginners Learn by Doing
      • Experts welcome to contribute their skills
      • We are working with best practices from Ontology Lifecycle (Systems Engineering) and Ontology Development (SUMO)

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ActInfLab

.comms

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.comms

  • Goal
    • To organize the Lab’s internal projects and activities.
    • To carry out all forms of communications with external entities.
  • Progress/Actions
    • Friston symposium follow-up
    • Continue Podcast
    • Continue Livestream
      • “.0” contextualizing video
      • “.1” and “.2” which are participatory group discussions (ideally with the authors)
    • Continue ModelStream
    • Continue GuestStream
    • Continue MathStream

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Karl Friston symposium & follow-up

bit.ly/3jgOvTE (or see our YouTube page)

  • We are working on making a transcript of the symposium, with references added.�
  • Then we will upload this transcript as a citable pre-print

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rb.gy/kvnpyc

Which papers should we read for 28, 29, 30?

Upcoming group discussion livestreams

Contact us if you would like to participate!

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In this talk I will present some of our recent work on mental health and well-being using the active inference framework. According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. Valence as we will see is modelled as error dynamics - the change in prediction errors over time. Our aim in this research is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer-term well-being. What emerges is the beginning of a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing.

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ModelStream with Bert de Vries, Thijs van de Laar and Dmitry Bagaev (https://biaslab.github.io/)

"Implementing Active Inference by Message Passing in a Factor Graph"

https://biaslab.github.io/project/forneylab/

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Do you want to give a GuestStream on your research? ��Do you have a suggestion for someone who would be great for a GuestStream, MathStream, or ModelStream? (Bonus points if you can reach out to them and make the connection).

We are now planning all kinds of events & presentations for the rest of 2021

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cognitio2021.com

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  • Affordances for participation in .comms
    • Lead and grow ActInfLab accounts in social media.
    • Contributing or improving the state of current series:
      • Podcast
      • Livestream, GuestStream, ModelStream, MathStream
    • Introduce new series/formats as required.
    • Compile & Curate the research products of ActInfLab participants (e.g. conference presentations, papers, etc).
    • Onboard new Participants in Livestreams.
    • Designing events/series about an application of Active Inference
    • Blogs & short writings
    • Tutorials
    • ….what else?

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ActInfLab

.tools

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.tools:

  • Goals
    • To enable effective tool & instrument use for all Active Inference Lab processes.
    • Explore and design affordances for our niche, resulting in effective action as well as innovations in tool development.
  • Progress
    • Weekly meetings for sharing resources, needs, ideas related to Systems Engineering of tools.
  • Next steps
    • Onboarding participants.
    • Understanding Lab tool use & needs

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We take a function-driven approach to thinking about Internal and External team communication, using the Active Inference framework

https://zenodo.org/record/4021163

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  • NetHack Challenge

discord.gg/ufAAhryneZ

nethackchallenge.com/

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  • Affordances for participation in .tools
    • Nethack challenge
      • Starting now in Discord, deadline = October 15th
      • Skills: Machine learning, hacking, gaming, etc...
    • ActInf based product research and engineering
    • Systems Engineering project-based learning
    • Helping us develop & improve our tool use

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#future

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Next steps for ActInfLab

    • Next steps within each unit (.edu, .comms, .tools).
    • Onboarding new participants
    • As we head into our 2nd semester of activity, we will focus more on defining governance structures, and on exploring new affordances now available to the non-profit.

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What are we curious to learn more about?

How do we want to apply Active Inference?

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What might a good understanding enable?

What are the unique predictions & implications?

What are the next steps for FEP & Active Inference?

What are the goals of this research?

What are you still curious about?

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Thanks for Participating!

We request feedback, suggestions, and questions

Stay in communication:

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Broader communities

Active Inference

Learners & Practitioners

Active Inference Lab

Active

Inference

Lab (Q2 2021)

.edu

.comms

.tools

Livestream

Body of Knowledge

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Active

Inference

Lab (Q2 2021)

.edu

.comms

.tools

Audio, Visual, Text

Body of Knowledge

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Participation

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Onboarding (ONFT)

Accessibility

Attention