Individually-Centric Cognition via Hierarchical Active Inference - Thomas Loker, 21.04.2026

We present ICFA, a cognitive agent architecture built on the Free Energy Principle where each layer of the hierarchy runs as an independent active inference agent at its own native scale, communicating through inter-blanket outcomes rather than coarse-grained data. We introduce a Confidence Corridor that extends the ELBO with a Confidence Upper Bound Estimate (CUBE), providing a bounded operating envelope for self-limiting autonomous behavior, and provide directional evidence that hierarchical compositionality emerges from quality-gated layer formation without explicit renormalization operators. The ICFA Cognitive Lab — a live simulation environment — demonstrates agents learning to navigate grid, sparse, and maze environments from scratch with no pre-training, forming composites that self-assemble and earn promotion to recursive FractalCores based on proven predictive accuracy. We conclude with a live demonstration and open questions on the relationship between ICFA's structural coarsification and RGM renormalization, and on extending these principles to hidden-state inference for behavioral biometric authentication. Thomas W. Loker is the Co-Founder and CTO of Individual Centricity Corporation, where he and Co-Founder Juval Löwy have spent over twenty years developing individually-centric architectures, publishing on the Free Energy Principle, precedence-based causality, and consciousness, and now applying Active Inference to on-device behavioral biometric identity validation through IC-Corp's 1TrueU fractalCore platform. The TNB Group has been fostering interdisciplinary research and collaboration for decades. Our mission is to advance the understanding and application of active inference, a theoretical framework developed by Prof. Karl Friston. This is achieved through regular online meetings featuring presentations and discussions, which may include theoretical frameworks, empirical data and its analysis, simulations, and mathematical development. We welcome contributions and perspectives from diverse fields, including neuroscience, mathematics, machine learning, psychology, philosophy, medicine, and biology. https://www.activeinference.institute...