{"paper":{"title":"Active Inference as a Convex Markov Decision Process","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.AI","stat.ML"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Nicol\\'as Hinrichs, Nico Scherf, Nikola Milosevic","submitted_at":"2026-07-22T13:52:40Z","abstract_excerpt":"Active Inference (AIF) frames adaptive behavior as the minimization of expected free energy (EFE), combining epistemic and pragmatic objectives within a single variational principle. We frame AIF as policy optimization and show that, for closed-loop control policies, EFE minimization can be formulated as a convex Markov decision process (MDP). In this formulation, the pragmatic terms are linear in the predictive state marginals and therefore equivalent to reward maximization in a latent MDP, while the epistemic value introduces a nonlinear component that distinguishes EFE minimization from sta"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.20152","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.20152/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}