person

Kenneth O. Stanley

Maven; ex-OpenAI; novelty search and open-endedness

Founder of Maven; previously head of Open-Endedness at OpenAI and a UCF professor. Author of 'Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned' (2015); pioneer of novelty search and open-ended evolution.

current Founder, Maven

past Head of Open-Endedness, OpenAI

homepage @kenneth0stanley

Strategy positions

Open-endednessendorses

Build AI via open-ended self-generated curricula; safety must follow from the dynamics

Argues open-ended search, pursuing novelty rather than fitness toward an objective, is how genuine creativity arises; treats this as a deep clue about how to build intelligence.

The biggest discoveries are not made by those who chase the goal directly, but by those who chase novelty. Greatness cannot be planned, and AI search procedures should reflect that.

❧ bookWhy Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective· Springer· 2015· faithful paraphrase

Closest strategy neighbours

by jaccard overlap

Other people whose strategy tags overlap with Kenneth O. Stanley's. Overlap is on tag identity, not stance; opposites can show up if they reference the same tags.

David Ha
shared 1 · J=1.00
Sakana AI co-founder; ex-Stability AI head of strategy
Deepak Pathak
shared 1 · J=1.00
CMU; curiosity-driven exploration; humanoid robotics
Joel Lehman
shared 1 · J=1.00
Independent researcher; ex-OpenAI; novelty search
Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
shared 1 · J=1.00
Inria; developmental AI and curiosity
Tim Rocktäschel
shared 1 · J=1.00
Google DeepMind / UCL; open-ended learning

Record last updated 2026-04-25.