ART-AI Seminar
We are pleased to have Daniel Polani, who is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire, join us for this ART-AI seminar entitled ‘Organisation of the Information Flow in the Perception-Action Loops’.
This seminar will take place in person in the Chancellors’ Building 3.15 (CB 3.15), on Tuesday 18th November 2025, 12.15pm-13.15pm (GMT). There is also an option to join online. Özgür Şimşek will be chairing this seminar. For more information, please e-mail [email protected].
Title
Organisation of the Information Flow in the Perception-Action Loop
Abstract
Agents interact with their environment primarily through their perception-action loop. One way to look at this interaction is to consider it as the exchange of information, specifically, Shannon information. In his talk, Daniel will discuss how that is done, how this relates to the structure of how the agent interacts with their environment (a high-level view of so-called “embodiment”) and a number of phenomena that can be understood through this perspective. It turns out that the embodiment or agent/environment interaction imposes substantial structure onto the information flow, in addition to the fundamental structural constraints that determine the relation between the agent and its environment.
Bio
Dr. Daniel Polani is Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. He is Head of the Adaptive Systems Research Group and Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Research (CAIRR). He works on principled information-theoretic models for cognitive modeling, ranging from fundamental questions, such as the role of embodiment, intrinsic motivations, taskless utilities, self-organization and Artificial Life, to questions from cognitive science, psychology, social science, and biology. The research both harnesses insights from biological cognition for flexible, resilient, and robust decision-making, the understanding and modeling of collective complex systems, and self-organization in artificial systems to using such systems, in turn, to understand biological phenomena. His group developed the concepts of “empowerment” and “relevant information” as characteristic features of the perception-action loop of embodied agents.
He is co-founder of the 18-monthly GSO (Guided Self-Organization) workshop series, co-organized the IMOL 2025 (Intrinsic Motivation and Open-Ended Learning) workshop at the University of Hertfordshire, and is Associate Editor of various journals.
