Carlotta Langer
Hamburg University of Technology
The active inference framework provides a principled approach to modeling sentient behavior. In this framework perception and action selection are treated in a unified way. The resulting agents form an internal generative model of the relevant dynamics of the world in order to infer their future observations, their internal states and to select actions. We combine this modeling framework with the Integrated Information Theory of consciousness and are therefore able to analyze the active inference agents from the perspective of integrated information. The Integrated Information Theory aims at quantifying the level of consciousness of a system by assessing its capability to integrate information. In this talk we define a measure of integrated information for the generative model by making an additional structural assumption. Experiments with simulated agents demonstrate the impact of modeling assumptions in the active inference framework on the integrated information value. Furthermore, we evaluate other information-theoretic measures within active inference agents, including one often referred to as Morphological Computation, which quantifies the interaction between an agent and its environment.
DFG SPP "The Active Self" 