Active Inference, Curiosity and Insight - PubMed Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Oct;29(10):2633-2683.
doi: 10.1162/neco_a_00999. Epub 2017 Aug 4.

Active Inference, Curiosity and Insight

Karl J Friston  1 , Marco Lin  2 , Christopher D Frith  3 , Giovanni Pezzulo  4 , J Allan Hobson  5 , Sasha Ondobaka  6
Affiliations

Active Inference, Curiosity and Insight

Karl J Friston et al. Neural Comput. 2017 Oct.

Abstract

This article offers a formal account of curiosity and insight in terms of active (Bayesian) inference. It deals with the dual problem of inferring states of the world and learning its statistical structure. In contrast to current trends in machine learning (e.g., deep learning), we focus on how people attain insight and understanding using just a handful of observations, which are solicited through curious behavior. We use simulations of abstract rule learning and approximate Bayesian inference to show that minimizing (expected) variational free energy leads to active sampling of novel contingencies. This epistemic behavior closes explanatory gaps in generative models of the world, thereby reducing uncertainty and satisfying curiosity. We then move from epistemic learning to model selection or structure learning to show how abductive processes emerge when agents test plausible hypotheses about symmetries (i.e., invariances or rules) in their generative models. The ensuing Bayesian model reduction evinces mechanisms associated with sleep and has all the hallmarks of "aha" moments. This formulation moves toward a computational account of consciousness in the pre-Cartesian sense of sharable knowledge (i.e., con: "together"; scire: "to know").

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources