Benjamin Rosman
School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand
Builder The claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open
Benjamin Rosman is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and director of the MIND Institute. His primary research program investigates how autonomous agents learn, compose, and transfer skills across complex decision spaces without hand-tuned reward shaping.
In consciousness-relevant agent modeling, Rosman collaborated with St John Grimbly, Jonathan Shock, Ryan Smith, and Mark Solms on the October 2026 study “Two Routes to Interoceptive Prioritisation: Preference Reweighting and Likelihood Precision in Multi-Need Homeostatic Agents” (arXiv:2610.18617). That work tests how an active-inference agent with a fixed total interoceptive precision budget can route attention toward whichever physiological channel is closest to a lethal boundary while dynamically scaling the urgency of its prior preferences.
His work brings formal sequential decision-making discipline to biologically inspired models of drive and affect, testing whether proposed homeostatic mechanisms actually keep an embodied agent alive under coupled action conflicts.
Known for. Reinforcement learning and decision-making in multi-need agents, skill composition, active inference homeostatic prioritisation
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
-
Mark SolmsUniversity of Cape TownNeuropsychoanalysis, and the brainstem account of affective consciousness
- Ryan SmithLaureate Institute for Brain Research. University of TulsaComputational psychiatry and active inference models of emotional awareness, interoceptive inference, hierarchical models of conscious access and affect
- St John GrimblyDepartment of Computer Science, University of Cape TownAffectWorld multi-need active inference environment, two routes to interoceptive prioritisation (preference reweighting and likelihood precision)
- Jonathan ShockDepartment of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, University of Cape TownMathematical physics and computational neuroscience of active inference, multi-need homeostatic agency, neural dynamics
- Karl FristonUniversity College London. Chief Scientist, VERSES AIThe free energy principle and active inference
- Vikas AgnihotriIndependent Aerospace and Neuromorphic Systems ResearcherNeuromorphic Satellite Intelligence framework, radiation-induced energy overhead model for spiking neural hardware, constrained on-orbit STDP
Benjamin Rosman is listed with the other builders, who hold that the claim is about what the hardware does, and the philosophy is left open. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.