Exploring Hierarchical Agency through Active Inference

What's the difference between a large language model and the human brain? And what's wrong with our theories of agency? In this episode, I chat about these questions with Jan Kulveit, who leads the Alignment of Complex Systems research group.

Patreon: patreon.com/axrpodcast

Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/axrpodcast

The transcript: axrp.net/episode/2024/05/30/episode-32-understanding-agency-jan-kulveit.html

Topics we discuss, and timestamps:

0:00:47 - What is active inference?

0:15:14 - Preferences in active inference

0:31:33 - Action vs perception in active inference

0:46:07 - Feedback loops

1:01:32 - Active inference vs LLMs

1:12:04 - Hierarchical agency

1:58:28 - The Alignment of Complex Systems group

Website of the Alignment of Complex Systems group (ACS): acsresearch.org

ACS on X/Twitter: x.com/acsresearchorg

Jan on LessWrong: lesswrong.com/users/jan-kulveit

Predictive Minds: Large Language Models as Atypical Active Inference Agents: arxiv.org/abs/2311.10215

Other works we discuss:

Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58275959

Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/

The self-unalignment problem: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9GyniEBaN3YYTqZXn/the-self-unalignment-problem

Mitigating generative agent social dilemmas (aka language models writing contracts for Minecraft): https://social-dilemmas.github.io/

Episode art by Hamish Doodles: hamishdoodles.com