1. A Factor Graph Description of Deep Temporal Active Inference
- Author
-
Bert de Vries and Karl J. Friston
- Subjects
active inference ,free-energy principle ,factor graphs ,belief propagation ,message passing ,multi-scale dynamical systems ,Neurosciences. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry ,RC321-571 - Abstract
Active inference is a corollary of the Free Energy Principle that prescribes how self-organizing biological agents interact with their environment. The study of active inference processes relies on the definition of a generative probabilistic model and a description of how a free energy functional is minimized by neuronal message passing under that model. This paper presents a tutorial introduction to specifying active inference processes by Forney-style factor graphs (FFG). The FFG framework provides both an insightful representation of the probabilistic model and a biologically plausible inference scheme that, in principle, can be automatically executed in a computer simulation. As an illustrative example, we present an FFG for a deep temporal active inference process. The graph clearly shows how policy selection by expected free energy minimization results from free energy minimization per se, in an appropriate generative policy model.
- Published
- 2017
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