List of presentations

This page contains a list of selected presentations that Manuel gave over the years, with PDFs and recordings shared whenever possible1. Please feel free to reference the material contained here, and leave a comment if you’d like.

Minor updates have been implemented whenever necessary (missing references, typos, etc.) but the contents have largely been left unchanged. While all of the material is based on some of Manuel’s previous work, bear in mind that his opinion and thoughts might have changed (following some at least approximate sequence of Bayesian inference steps) over time.

Invited presentations

  • Using goals to compress models, effects of bisimulations for (PO)MDPs on embodied agents, Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Goal-Directed Behaviour, BCAM, Bilbao, Spain - Oct 2024

  • The Role of the Free Energy Principle in AI Safety: Markov Blankets and Beyond, TAIS - Technical AI Safety Conference, Tokyo, Japan - Apr 2024

  • LLMs beyond Transformers (panel discussion), Tokyo AI Talks @ GHOVC, Tokyo, Japan - Jan 2024

  • The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets, COGS Academic Seminars, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK - Oct 2023   pdf

  • Minimal agency, Agent Foundations for Alignment: Clear Thinking for Messy Minds, Oxford, UK - Oct 2023   pdf

  • The free energy principle and the internal model principle: A guide for the study of agents?, Active Inference meets AI Alignment, Oxford, UK - Oct 2023   pdf

  • Inference with and within a model, CHAIN Academic Seminars, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan - Feb 2023   recording

  • CHAIN Winter School on Minimal Cognition and Agency, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan - Feb 2023
    • Lecture 1 - Defining agency   pdf   recording
    • Lecture 2 - A history of studies of agency   pdf   recording
    • Lecture 3 - First-principles definitions of agents   pdf   recording

  • Inference with and within a model, Consciousness Club, Tokyo, Japan - July 2022   pdf   recording

  • Variational inference in agents, with connections to control theory and cognitive (neuro)science}, RIKEN AIP, Tokyo, Japan - Jul 2021   pdf

  • Active inference for cognitive science and artificial intelligence - open questions and new challenges, CHAIN Academic Seminars, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan - Jan 2020

  • PID control as active inference: what can we gain from this formulation?, 2nd Active inference workshop, TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands - Nov 2018

  • The free energy principle and active inference, connecting control theory to biology, Active inference workshop, TU Delft, Delft, Netherlands - Apr 2018

Contributed presentations

  • A mathematical perspective on the role of embodiment in predictive coding frameworks, Aware and Alive Workshop, Sapporo, Jul 2024   pdf   recording

  • The Role of the Free Energy Principle in AI Safety: Markov Blankets and Beyond, Technical AI Safety Conference, Tokyo, Apr 2024   pdf   recording

  • A relational theory of agency (and goals?), Japan AI Alignment Conference 2023, Tokyo, Mar 2023   pdf

  • The Emperor’s New Markov Blankets, Annual meeting of the Association of Scientific Studies of Consciousness (ASSC 25) 2022, Amsterdam, Netherlands - Jul 2022

  • Predictions in the eye of the beholder: an active inference account of Watt governors, International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE) 2020, Montreal, Canada - Jul 2020   recording

  • A Bayesian perspective on classical control, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2020, Glasgow, UK - Jul 2020   pdf

  • The dark room problem in predictive processing and active inference, a legacy of cognitivism?, International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE) 2019, Newcastle, UK - Jul 2019

  • Nonmodular architectures of cognitive systems based on active inference, International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) 2019, Budapest, Hungary - Jul 2019   pdf

  • Action-oriented models for active inference: examples and connections to 4E ideas, Alergic seminars, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK - May 2019

  • A probabilistic interpretation of PID controllers using active inference, International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB) 2018, Frankfurt, Germany - Aug 2018

  • The modularity of action and perception revisited using control theory and active inference}, International Conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE) 2018, Tokyo, Japan - Jul 2018

  • The free energy principle and active inference, connections to 4Es views of cognition, Friston Lab - Theoretical neurobiology meeting @ Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, London, UK - Mar 2018

  • The free energy principle for the study of action and perception} @
    • Honda Research Institute Japan Co. Ltd. (HRI-JP) - Department Intelligence Science \& Technology, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan - Jan 2018
    • Ikegami Laboratory - Department of General Systems Sciences, University of Tokyo, Japan - Jan 2018
    • Laboratory for Neural Computation and Adaptation - RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Saitama, Japan - Dec 2017
  • An active inference implementation of phototaxis, European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL) 2017, Lyon, France - Sep 2017

  1. In some cases sharing was/is not allowed, (but do expect more PDFs over time). Sometimes a (virtually) identical presentation was given in multiple occasions so no PDFs will be included, this is especially true for presentations with the same title. ↩︎

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