What the flock knows that the birds do not: exploring the emergence of joint agency in multi-agent active inference

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how multi-agent active inference systems can self-organize into a collective entity with joint agency and knowledge, exhibiting emergent properties like coordinated responses and shared information about environmental threats.

Contribution

It introduces a model combining active inference and information theory to explain the emergence of collective agency and knowledge in flocking dynamics.

Findings

Flocks form higher-order statistical boundaries as emergent agents.

Flocks respond faster and more coordinated to external threats.

The flock encodes information about predators not accessible to individual agents.

Abstract

Collective behavior pervades biological systems, from flocks of birds to neural assemblies and human societies. Yet, how such collectives acquire functional properties -- such as joint agency or knowledge -- that transcend those of their individual components remains an open question. Here, we combine active inference and information-theoretic analyses to explore how a minimal system of interacting agents can give rise to joint agency and collective knowledge. We model flocking dynamics using multiple active inference agents, each minimizing its own free energy while coupling reciprocally with its neighbors. We show that as agents self-organize, their interactions define higher-order statistical boundaries (Markov blankets) enclosing a ``flock'' that can be treated as an emergent agent with its own sensory, active, and internal states. When exposed to external perturbations (a ``predator''), the flock exhibits faster, coordinated responses than individual agents, reflecting collective sensitivity to environmental change. Crucially, analyses of synergistic information reveal that the flock encodes information about the predator's location that is not accessible to every individual bird, demonstrating implicit collective knowledge. Together, these results show how informational coupling among active inference agents can generate new levels of autonomy and inference, providing a framework for understanding the emergence of (implicit) collective knowledge and joint agency.