Active inference agents minimise the expected free energy over a trajectory of actions. Free energy over a trajectory is the divergence between the variational distribution Q(o|π) of expected outcomes, o, given the action policy, π, and P(o|C): the conditioned probability of outcomes, o, upon some desired state of affairs, C…

Upon reading “On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models”, 2.3 “Robotics”, I predict that manufacturing automation could, and probably will be automated without foundation models for robotics. Robotic AI which uses non-foundation models and is supervised by humans will be used in manufacturing until AGI arrives. Making a foundation…

The statement from the title of this post is the result of combining several ideas which I present below. …

System analysis, risk analysis, requirements management, systems management, system synthesis, enterprise architecture, and change management — This post is the first in a series about the important aspects of the discipline (method) of information systems architecture. The word “systems” in this phrase refers not merely to the “architecture of information systems” (any systems that involve some information technology or software, which is nowadays pretty much every…

For the purposes of this post, a model is a nebulous concept related to a mathematical function, but not equivalent to it. A function is an “ideal” mathematical object, whereas a model can be limited to verifying that certain arguments correspond to a certain value in a function, but not…

Principles, causal models, the role of intuition in business, PR FAQ, people-centric approach to invention, critical rationalism — Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr is a book about how Amazon company functions. The authors describe concrete processes and tactics used at Amazon to support their leadership principles. The authors also recount many stories from Amazon to illustrate and convey these principles.

Statistics, causality, causal modelling, mediation analysis, counterfactuals, causal representation learning, ethical AI, philosophy of research, the power of abstractions, and systems thinking — Judea Pearl’s and Dana Mackenzie’s The Book of Why is a theoretical and practical book about epistemology, intertwined with history of science (particularly, the history of thinking about causality and causal inference and the application of these ideas in science). …

In Anatoly Levenchuk’s book Education for Educated (in Russian), I’ve encountered a very powerful idea that ontologies (or, less formally, lists of various things) should be used as checklists to prevent omissions in thinking about situations and systems. This idea led me to realise that there are lots of lists…

Thinking/reasoning of both humans and machines could be arranged along the formality gradient of semantics. This picture is adapted from Anatoly Levenchuk’s book Education for Educated (in Russian): Amazon’s six-pagers are tasked, among other things, to make decision-making more formal. Making decisions after an oral discussion is not completely intuitive…