Related papers: Chance-Constrained Active Inference
The way the brain selects and controls actions is still widely debated. Mainstream approaches based on Optimal Control focus on stimulus-response mappings that optimize cost functions. Ideomotor theory and cybernetics propose a different…
With the recent success of world-model agents, which extend the core idea of model-based reinforcement learning by learning a differentiable model for sample-efficient control across diverse tasks, active inference (AIF) offers a…
Purpose and meaning are necessary concepts for understanding mind and culture, but appear to be absent from the physical world and are not part of the explanatory framework of the natural sciences. Understanding how meaning (in the broad…
Recent advances in theoretical biology suggest that basal cognition and sentient behaviour are emergent properties of in vitro cell cultures and neuronal networks, respectively. Such neuronal networks spontaneously learn structured…
Research on the so-called "free-energy principle'' (FEP) in cognitive neuroscience is becoming increasingly high-profile. To date, introductions to this theory have proved difficult for many readers to follow, but it depends mainly upon two…
Active inference is a mathematical framework that originated in computational neuroscience. Recently, it has been demonstrated as a promising approach for constructing goal-driven behavior in robotics. Specifically, the active inference…
Understanding adaptive human driving behavior, in particular how drivers manage uncertainty, is of key importance for developing simulated human driver models that can be used in the evaluation and development of autonomous vehicles.…
The free energy principle, and its corollary active inference, constitute a bio-inspired theory that assumes biological agents act to remain in a restricted set of preferred states of the world, i.e., they minimize their free energy. Under…
The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness…
Active inference is a Bayesian framework for understanding biological intelligence. The underlying theory brings together perception and action under one single imperative: minimizing free energy. However, despite its theoretical utility in…
Causal reasoning has been an indispensable capability for humans and other intelligent animals to interact with the physical world. In this work, we propose to endow an artificial agent with the capability of causal reasoning for completing…
Causal discovery and causal reasoning are classically treated as separate and consecutive tasks: one first infers the causal graph, and then uses it to estimate causal effects of interventions. However, such a two-stage approach is…
Inferring intent from observed behavior has been studied extensively within the frameworks of Bayesian inverse planning and inverse reinforcement learning. These methods infer a goal or reward function that best explains the actions of the…
Collision avoidance -- involving a rapid threat detection and quick execution of the appropriate evasive maneuver -- is a critical aspect of driving. However, existing models of human collision avoidance behavior are fragmented, focusing on…
The proliferation of agentic artificial intelligence has outpaced the conceptual tools needed to characterize agency in computational systems. Prevailing definitions mainly rely on autonomy and goal-directedness. Here, we argue for a…
This paper describes a novel method for building affectively intelligent human-interactive agents. The method is based on a key sociological insight that has been developed and extensively verified over the last twenty years, but has yet to…
Causal influence measures for machine learnt classifiers shed light on the reasons behind classification, and aid in identifying influential input features and revealing their biases. However, such analyses involve evaluating the classifier…
Model interpretation, or explanation of a machine learning classifier, aims to extract generalizable knowledge from a trained classifier into a human-understandable format, for various purposes such as model assessment, debugging and trust.…
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) is a theoretical framework for describing how (intelligent) systems self-organise into coherent, stable structures by minimising a free energy functional. Active Inference (AIF) is a corollary of the FEP that…
People act upon their desires, but often, also act in adherence to implicit social norms. How do people infer these unstated social norms from others' behavior, especially in novel social contexts? We propose that laypeople have intuitive…