July 2025 Newsletter 🌊🐋🎢 Active Inference Institute
Updates from July & Looking to the second half of 2025
We hope you have had a good July, the official Summer Break period for the Institute.
Starting in August, regular project activities will pick back up and continue through November. Check out which projects and meetings are happening and see where you might want to get involved.
If you would like to raise the visibility of your project and possibly include others in the work, use the Prepare form — note what kind of collaboration you are seeking, what kind of support the Institute might provide, and if you want any meetings to be added to the open calendar.
Use the Measurement form for providing updates on your work, which we may share in the monthly news letter.
One of the highlights of the coming interval of activities will be the 5th Applied Active Inference Symposium, with a theme of “Industry”, on November 12-14, 2025. More information will be provided on participation in the coming months. For now, check out the website with more information on previous Symposia, and consider applying as a Presenter. We are also seeking organizational sponsors to increase the resourcing and impact of the Symposium, please reach out if you might be able to advocate for this possibility at your organization, or connect us with a suitable sponsor.
The Theoretical Neurobiology Group (Karl Friston’s lab meeting) continues to have 1-2 excellent meetings per week. Recordings are available on YouTube, also for those who are available, it is highly recommended to try to join in live in these historic proceedings!
We will resume the Textbook Group on August 21st. Whether you have participated in the group previously or not, this will be a great opportunity to discuss background and fundamental aspects of Active Inference and the Free Energy Principle. All backgrounds and familiarity with Active Inference are welcome in this group.
Starting August 12, on Tuesdays at 13 UTC, in the Discord, we will be meeting to onboard and develop the Active Inference Journal. These meetings will be of interest to those who want to learn and apply topics related to Decentralized Science (DeSci), open source, publishing, dissemination, translation, multimodal and transmedia digital communication, accessibility, and information/library science.
Starting August 8, on Fridays at 14 UTC, in the Discord, we will be meeting to onboard onto and develop GEO-INFER. This project and meeting should be of interest to those who want to learn and apply open source methods in geospatial intelligence, bioregional modeling, nested active inference systems.
Starting on August 6 on Wednesdays at 15 UTC, in the Discord, we will have working meetings for the Generalized Notation Notation project. An initial goal will be to have the same generative model, rendered and executed across PyMDP, ActiveInference.jl, and RxInfer.jl implementation frameworks. This project will be of interest to those who want to increase the accessibility, applicability, and reproducibility of generative modeling.
Some highlight livestreams from the last month included:
GuestStream #114.1 with Chris Fields, Karl Friston, Maxwell J.D Ramstead, Adam Safron on How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience
GuestStream #115.1 with Alexi Gladstone on Energy-Based Transformers are Scalable Learners and Thinkers
If you would like to help out with the Audiovisual Production project over the coming few months, there are many roles available “on stage” as well as “behind the scenes”, for example to help plan livestreams, and add value/meaning to the ones already passed. This is an excellent place for contributions from people with all different backgrounds, language skills, and interests in Active Inference.
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Here is the entry point for 2025, and ways to get involved with the Institute and Ecosystem this year.
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More to come! Stay tuned via the newsletter and Discord.
Officers 🎆