In this episode of the Data Exchange I speak with Kenneth Stanley, a Senior Research Manager at Uber AI and a Professor at UCF. Ken just announced that starting in June he is starting a new research group focused on open-endedness at OpenAI.  He is a pioneer in the field of neuroevolution – a method for evolving and learning neural networks through evolutionary algorithms. Ken and his colleague, Joel Lehman, wrote one of my favorite books on AI aimed at a broad audience: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned. In this episode we discuss his upcoming move to OpenAI, as well as his recent work on open-ended algorithms.

Our conversation covered:

• Ken’s new position at OpenAI.
• The transition from being a longtime academic researcher to founding and helping lead an industrial research team (Uber AI Labs).
• Open-ended algorithms, specifically his work on POET (Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer) and Enhanced POET.
• Generative Teaching Networks

Detailed show notes can be found on The Data Exchange web site.

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