Is the Universe Really Optimizing for Novelty?

Today, most machine learning algorithms use the same paradigm: set an objective, and train an agent, a neural net, or a classical model to perform well against that objective. That approach has given good results: these types of AI can hear, speak, write, read, draw, drive and more.

But they’re also inherently limited: because they optimize for objectives that seem interesting to humans, they often avoid regions of parameter space that are valuable, but that don’t immediately seem interesting to human beings, or the objective functions we set. That poses a challenge for researchers like Ken Stanley, whose goal is to build broadly superintelligent AIs — intelligent systems that outperform humans at a wide range of tasks. Among other things, Ken is a former startup founder and AI researcher, whose career has included work in academia, at UberAI labs, and most recently at OpenAI, where he leads the open-ended learning team.

Ken joined me to talk about his 2015 book Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, what open-endedness could mean for humanity, the future of intelligence, and even AI safety on this episode of the TDS podcast.