Boundaries

Projects | 2026 | Links:

Our work on agents and agency uses categorical systems theory, where an agent and its environment interact through a fixed interface. When boundaries change, interfaces change with them, and it becomes unclear how an agent’s identity is preserved. In The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets, we examined how Markov blankets came to be used to define the boundary between an agent and its environment.

Boundaries are also a direction for AI safety research. Manuel attended the Conceptual Boundaries Workshop in Austin (February 2024), and was one of the research organisers of the Mathematical Boundaries Workshop in Berkeley (April 2024), which aimed to build mathematical models of boundaries (retrospective).

Papers

• The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets

  Bruineberg, J., Dolega, K., Dewhurst, J., & Baltieri, M.

  Behavioral and Brain Sciences · Journal article

  Publisher PDF Preprint

• The Emperor is Naked: Replies to the commentaries on the target article.

  Bruineberg, J., Dolega, K., Dewhurst, J., & Baltieri, M.

  Behavioral and Brain Sciences · Journal article

  Publisher PDF