February 2026 Newsletter 🕸️💓🚋 Active Inference Institute
Hello all, we have many updates to share this month, and much more upcoming for this year!
Institute-scale Updates
Want to be a part of an in-person Summer School? The Seasonal School project is currently reviewing interest (co-organizers, sponsors, students, instructors, and more) for an in-person Summer School to be held in Spain (Summer 2026). We plan to continue with the next round of planning starting in March — if you are interested in contributing to these efforts, please contact blanket@activeinference.institute with subject line [SUMMER].
This page gives a 1-page summary of the structure of the Institute — a helpful entry point for those who are new, or learning about our (growing) organizational morphology.
Updates from Institute Fellows
Hongju Pae presents Perspective Architectures for Coherent and Attuned Artificial Agency, a research program examining how subjectivity emerges in artificial systems, and why this may be foundational for robust AI alignment beyond behavioral control. A crowdfunding campaign hosted by the Institute is now live to support the next phase (5-minute pitch + details here).
Sheila Macrine reports: Her new book, Embodied Intelligence: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Natural, Artificial, and Hybrid Systems (MIT Press, 2026), is to be released open access at MIT Press in June 2026.
Updates from Projects
The textbook “Fundamentals of Active Inference: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications of the Free Energy Principle for Engineers” by Sanjeev V. Namjoshi (2026), will be released in March! We will start to host a textbook group starting in April 2026! All details and registration form here.
Knowledge Engineering project (Daniel Friedman) reports: the live interactive knowledge graph, at obsidian.activeinference.institute (underlying repo here) has been updated and augmented.
The Generalized Notation Notation project (Daniel Friedman) reports: with the recent v1.3.0 release of the GNN software, there are now abilities to analyze, render, and execute generative models using multiple implementations (pymdp, RxInfer.jl, Jax, ActiveInference.jl, and DisCoPy). There are also enhanced agentic abilities to use GNN methods via MCP and SKILLS.
Active Inference Journal project (Daniel Friedman) reports: We did a livestream demonstrating the newLocal Interface (Download, Listen, View, Chat) for Institute Videos (Journal Utilities v0.1.0). See the repo here and learn about the capabilities!
The 7th International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI) will be in Madrid, Spain, from 14-16 October, 2026.
Artificial Sentience project (Cleber Gomes) reports the publication of Tonic Dopamine as the Engine of Motivation. In this post, the focus is on a single question: What happens if an agent has goals and pleasures, but no cue learning or reward prediction errors? The central insight of the post is that motivation has an optimal range. Too little tonic dopamine leads to inertia; too much leads to instability or compulsion. Pleasure alone does not guarantee motivation, and motivation alone does not guarantee goal attainment. This post sets the stage for the next step in the series. While tonic dopamine can energize behavior, it cannot explain why neutral cues acquire overwhelming motivational power, or why seeking persists when pleasure fades. To understand those phenomena, we must introduce phasic dopamine, cue sensitization, and prediction errors — the subject of the next post.
Some highlight livestreams from the last month included:
Active InferAnt Stream #017.1 ~ 2/14/2026 with Daniel Friedman on
“Of Course I Can” Active Inference Courses for All
All courses are available open source here.GuestStream #015.4 ~ 2/25/2026 with Bobby Azarian on
A Strange Loop Solution to the Hard Problem of ConsciousnessIf you would like to help make audio-visual content with the Institute are many roles available “on stage” as well as “behind the scenes”, for example to help plan livestreams. See this video for more information.
All activities at, and products from, the Institute are provided open source and without any financial barrier. Donate to the Institute to support our impact and sustainability.
Here is the entry point for 2026, and ways to get involved with the Institute and Ecosystem this year. Contact us with other philanthropic and grant ideas.
Get in touch if you have general or specific feedback, ideas, or questions for the Institute.
Complete a Measurement form to have your research, education, and work updates included in a future newsletter.
More to come! Stay tuned via the newsletter and Discord.
Both with Certainty and Uncertainty,
Officers, Alexandra & Daniel
👣👣
