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Active inference is a theory that underpins the way biological agent's perceive and act in the real world. At its core, active inference is based on the principle that the brain is an approximate Bayesian inference engine, building an…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-03-09 Ozan Çatal , Samuel Wauthier , Tim Verbelen , Cedric De Boom , Bart Dhoedt

Physical AI agents, such as robots and other embodied systems operating under tight and fluctuating resource constraints, remain far less capable than biological agents in open-ended real-world environments. This paper argues that Active…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2026-03-24 Bert de Vries

Active inference is a unifying theory for perception and action resting upon the idea that the brain maintains an internal model of the world by minimizing free energy. From a behavioral perspective, active inference agents can be seen as…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-17 Pietro Mazzaglia , Tim Verbelen , Bart Dhoedt

Flexible, goal-directed behavior is a fundamental aspect of human life. Based on the free energy minimization principle, the theory of active inference formalizes the generation of such behavior from a computational neuroscience…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2022-08-03 Fedor Scholz , Christian Gumbsch , Sebastian Otte , Martin V. Butz

Intelligent agents must pursue their goals in complex environments with partial information and often limited computational capacity. Reinforcement learning methods have achieved great success by creating agents that optimize engineered…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-06-07 Alejandro Daniel Noel , Charel van Hoof , Beren Millidge

Active inference is a process theory of the brain that states that all living organisms infer actions in order to minimize their (expected) free energy. However, current experiments are limited to predefined, often discrete, state spaces.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-02-25 Ozan Çatal , Tim Verbelen , Johannes Nauta , Cedric De Boom , Bart Dhoedt

Active Inference is an emerging framework providing a quantitative account of behavioral processes in neuroscience and a principled approach to decision-making under uncertainty. Its application to agency problems is natural, offering an…

Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science · Computer Science 2026-04-15 Francesco Maria Mancinelli , Matteo Torzoni , Domenico Maisto , Francesco Donnarumma , Alberto Corigliano , Giovanni Pezzulo , Andrea Manzoni

In the last decade, the free energy principle (FEP) and active inference (AIF) have achieved many successes connecting conceptual models of learning and cognition to mathematical models of perception and action. This effort is driven by a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-11-25 Joséphine Pazem , Marius Krumm , Alexander Q. Vining , Lukas J. Fiderer , Hans J. Briegel

With recent and rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), understanding the foundation of purposeful behaviour in autonomous agents is crucial for developing safe and efficient systems. While artificial neural networks have…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-08-12 Aswin Paul , Moein Khajehnejad , Forough Habibollahi , Brett J. Kagan , Adeel Razi

The central tenet of reinforcement learning (RL) is that agents seek to maximize the sum of cumulative rewards. In contrast, active inference, an emerging framework within cognitive and computational neuroscience, proposes that agents act…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-03-02 Alexander Tschantz , Beren Millidge , Anil K. Seth , Christopher L. Buckley

The active inference framework (AIF) is a promising new computational framework grounded in contemporary neuroscience that can produce human-like behavior through reward-based learning. In this study, we test the ability for the AIF to…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2022-11-21 Zhizhuo Yang , Gabriel J. Diaz , Brett R. Fajen , Reynold Bailey , Alexander Ororbia

We seek to clarify the concept of active inference by disentangling it from the Free Energy Principle. We show how the optimizations that need to be carried out in order to implement active inference in discrete state spaces can be…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-21 Patrick Kenny

Active inference is a normative framework for explaining behaviour under the free energy principle -- a theory of self-organisation originating in neuroscience. It specifies neuronal dynamics for state-estimation in terms of a descent on…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2021-10-26 Lancelot Da Costa , Thomas Parr , Biswa Sengupta , Karl Friston

We develop an active inference route-planning method for the autonomous control of intelligent agents. The aim is to reconnoiter a geographical area to maintain a common operational picture. To achieve this, we construct an evidence map…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-10-21 Johan Schubert , Farzad Kamrani , Tove Gustavi

In humans, perceptual awareness facilitates the fast recognition and extraction of information from sensory input. This awareness largely depends on how the human agent interacts with the environment. In this work, we propose active neural…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Alexander Ororbia , Ankur Mali

Active inference offers a first principle account of sentient behaviour, from which special and important cases can be derived, e.g., reinforcement learning, active learning, Bayes optimal inference, Bayes optimal design, etc. Active…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2020-06-09 Karl Friston , Lancelot Da Costa , Danijar Hafner , Casper Hesp , Thomas Parr

Active learning agents typically employ a query selection algorithm which solely considers the agent's learning objectives. However, this may be insufficient in more realistic human domains. This work uses imitation learning to enable an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-07-02 Kalesha Bullard , Yannick Schroecker , Sonia Chernova

Given the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, understanding the foundations of intelligent behaviour is increasingly important. Active inference, regarded as a general theory of behaviour, offers a principled approach to probing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-06-12 Aswin Paul , Takuya Isomura , Adeel Razi

By dynamic planning, we refer to the ability of the human brain to infer and impose motor trajectories related to cognitive decisions. A recent paradigm, active inference, brings fundamental insights into the adaptation of biological…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-11-13 Matteo Priorelli , Ivilin Peev Stoianov

Artificial agents capable of understanding and aligning with others' intentions are essential for safe and socially robust artificial intelligence. We introduce a computational framework for empathy in active inference agents, grounded in…