active inference

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a process theory of brain function developed by Karl Friston that extends predictive processing into the domain of action, proposing that biological agents act upon the world to fulfil their generative models rather than merely to obtain rewards; under active inference, action and perception are unified under a single imperative — minimising free energy, a measure of surprise or the difference between predicted and actual sensory states; the framework provides a principled account of goal-directed behaviour, habit formation, and the breakdown of action regulation in psychiatric conditions; it has also been applied in robotics and artificial intelligence as a framework for building autonomous agents that act by minimising uncertainty