mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

What Type of Inference is Active Inference?

arXiv 2606.04935 ↗First posted 3 Jun 2026cs.AIcited by 2

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Active inference casts decision-making as inference, with the Expected Free Energy (EFE) unifying goal-directed and information-seeking behavior. Recent work showed that EFE minimization can be written as Variational Free Energy (VFE) minimization on a generative model augmented with epistemic priors. We prove that the VFE of the augmented model can be rewritten as the VFE of the predictive model plus explicit entropy-correction terms, making the EFE contribution transparent. We then show that proper EFE-based planning requires combining these epistemic corrections with a planning correction that turns marginal inference into policy optimization, yielding a full variational characterization of EFE-based planning. This clarifies which corrections are needed for cross-entropy planning and for full EFE-based planning. The same entropy-corrected formulation leads to a detailed message-passing scheme for EFE-based planning together with simpler ablations. Experiments on three grid-world environments show that full EFE-based planning outperforms ablations that omit either the planning correction or the epistemic corrections.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 14 of its 42 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Jun 2026.

Builds on

14 of 42 references.

References · 14

  1. 2016Variational Inference: A Review for Statisticianscited by 1,472
  2. 2018Reinforcement Learning and Control as Probabilistic Inference: Tutorial and Reviewcited by 482
  3. 2020Active inference on discrete state-spaces: a synthesiscited by 92
  4. 2020Sophisticated Inferencecited by 56
  5. 2020Whence the Expected Free Energy?cited by 40
  6. 2020Making Sense of Reinforcement Learning and Probabilistic Inferencecited by 30
  7. 2021Branching Time Active Inference: the theory and its generalitycited by 15
  8. 2023On efficient computation in active inferencecited by 15
  9. 2023Probabilistic Inference in Reinforcement Learning Done Rightcited by 11
  10. 2025Expected Free Energy-based Planning as Variational Inferencecited by 10
  11. 2024What type of inference is planning?cited by 9
  12. 2023Realising Synthetic Active Inference Agents, Part II: Variational Message Updatescited by 7
2 more
  1. 2025A Message Passing Realization of Expected Free Energy Minimizationcited by 5
  2. 2023Realising Synthetic Active Inference Agents, Part I: Epistemic Objectives and Graphical Specification Languagecited by 4

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

  1. 2026Active Inference as a Convex Markov Decision Processcited by 1
  2. 2026Information Geometry of Message Passingcited by 0