Kenneth Stanley

{{Short description|Artificial intelligence researcher, author}} {{Infobox scientist | honorific_prefix = | name = Kenneth O. Stanley | honorific_suffix = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | image =  | image_size = | image_upright = | alt = | caption = | birth_name =  | birth_date =  | birth_place = | death_date =  | death_place = | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates =  | other_names = | siglum = | pronounce = | citizenship =  | nationality =  | fields = {{Plainlist| *Artificial intelligence *Neuroevolution }} | workplaces = {{Plainlist| *OpenAI *Uber *University of Central Florida}} | patrons = | education = | alma_mater = University of Texas at Austin (PhD) | thesis_title = Efficient Evolution of Neural Networks Through Complexification | thesis_url = http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/keyword?stanley:phd04 | thesis_year = 2004 | doctoral_advisor = Risto Miikkulainen | academic_advisors = | doctoral_students = | notable_students = | known_for = Neuroevolution of augmenting topologies | influences = | influenced = | awards = | author_abbrev_bot = | author_abbrev_zoo = | spouse =  | partner =  | children = | parents = | father = Richard P. Stanley | mother = | relatives = | signature =  | signature_alt = | website = {{URL|https://www.kenstanley.net/}} | footnotes = }} '''Kenneth Owen Stanley''' is an artificial intelligence researcher, author, and former professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida known for creating the Neuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT) algorithm. He coauthored ''Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective'' with Joel Lehman which argues for the existence of the "objective paradox", a paradox which states that "soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it".<ref name="fivethirtyeight">{{cite news |last1=Aschwanden |first1=Christie |author-link=Christie Aschwanden |title=Stop Trying To Be Creative |url=https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-trying-to-be-creative/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150725235553/http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-trying-to-be-creative/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 25, 2015 |access-date=5 April 2022 |work=FiveThirtyEight |date=23 July 2015}}</ref> While a professor at the University of Central Florida, he was the director of the Evolutionary Complexity Research Group (EPlex)<ref name="eplex">{{cite web |title=EPlex People |url=http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/people |website=eplex.cs.ucf.edu |access-date=5 April 2022 }}{{Dead link|date=May 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> which led the development of Galactic Arms Race. He also developed the HyperNEAT,<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Stanley|first1=Kenneth O.|last2=D'Ambrosio|first2=David B.|last3=Gauci|first3=Jason|date=2009-01-14|title=A Hypercube-Based Encoding for Evolving Large-Scale Neural Networks|journal=Artificial Life|volume=15|issue=2|pages=185–212|doi=10.1162/artl.2009.15.2.15202|pmid=19199382|s2cid=26390526|issn=1064-5462|url=https://stars.library.ucf.edu/facultybib2000/2178 |access-date=30 May 2022|url-access=subscription}}</ref> CPPNs,<ref>{{cite journal | author=Kenneth O. Stanley | year=2007 | title=Compositional Pattern Producing Networks: A Novel Abstraction of Development | journal=Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines | volume=8 | issue=2 | pages=131–162 | url=http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/papers/stanley_gpem07.pdf | doi=10.1007/s10710-007-9028-8 | citeseerx=10.1.1.643.8179 | s2cid=2535195 | access-date=30 May 2022 | archive-date=9 March 2024 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240309224337/http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/papers/stanley_gpem07.pdf | url-status=dead }}</ref> and novelty search<ref name="noveltysearch">{{cite journal |last1=Lehman |first1=Joel |last2=Stanley |first2=Kenneth O. |title=Abandoning Objectives: Evolution Through the Search for Novelty Alone |journal=Evolutionary Computation |date=June 2011 |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=189–223 |doi=10.1162/EVCO_a_00025 |pmid=20868264 |s2cid=12129661 |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6793380 |access-date=30 May 2022 |issn=1063-6560}}</ref> algorithms.<ref name="uber">{{cite web |title=Uber Engineering Blog |url=https://eng.uber.com/author/kenneth-stanley/ |website=Uber Engineering Blog |access-date=30 May 2022 |date=30 June 2020 |archive-date=3 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220703063121/https://eng.uber.com/author/kenneth-stanley/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> He also co-founded Geometric Intelligence, an AI research firm, in 2015.<ref name="uberacquires">{{cite news |title=Uber acquires Geometric Intelligence to create an AI lab |url=https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/05/uber-acquires-geometric-intelligence-to-create-an-ai-lab/ |access-date=31 May 2022 |work=TechCrunch}}</ref><ref name="ucfgeo">{{cite news |last1=Schlueb |first1=Mark |title=UCF Professor Talks About Why Uber Acquired His Tech Startup |url=https://www.ucf.edu/news/ucf-professor-talks-uber-acquired-startup/ |access-date=9 June 2022 |work=University of Central Florida News {{!}} UCF Today |date=3 July 2017 |language=en-us}}</ref>

==Early life and education== Kenneth Stanley is the son of Richard P. Stanley. He became interested in computer programming at the age of 8 during a summer camp. He later pursued his interest by taking AP Computer Science at Newton South High School and majoring in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1997. He received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin under Risto Miikkulainen in 2004 for his work developing the Neuroevolution of augmenting topologies (NEAT) algorithm.<ref name="osc">{{cite web |title=Artificial Intelligence Q&A With Kenneth Stanley |url=https://www.osc.org/ken-stanley-interview/ |website=Orlando Science Center |access-date=30 May 2022 |date=20 November 2019 |archive-date=6 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221206205647/https://www.osc.org/ken-stanley-interview/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref name="thesis">{{cite journal |last1=Stanley |first1=Kenneth O. |title=Efficient Evolution of Neural Networks Through Complexification |date=2004 |url=http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/keyword?stanley:phd04 |journal = Department of Computer Sciences, the University of Texas at Austin|access-date=30 May 2022}}</ref>

==Work== In 2006, he became an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and later became a Charles Millican Professor in 2017.<ref name="linkedin">{{cite web |title=Kenneth Stanley - San Francisco, California, United States |url=https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-stanley-3a159b/ |website=linkedin |access-date=9 June 2022}}</ref>

In 2007, he created PicBreeder, a piece of software that uses NEAT to allow users to evolve pictures by randomly generating images and having the user pick which image will produce children. This allows users to shape random blobs into recognizable shapes like animals or cars. Watching the algorithm evolve what appeared to be a pair of alien eyes into an image that looked like a car led Stanley to realize that nearly every interesting image on PicBreeder evolved by way of a different looking image. This led him to develop what he calls the steppingstone principle that, "Instead of hard-coding the rules of reasoning, or having computers learn to score highly on specific performance metrics ... we must let a population of solutions blossom. Make them prioritize novelty or interestingness instead of the ability to walk or talk. They may discover an indirect path, a set of steppingstones, and wind up walking and talking better than if they’d sought those skills directly."<ref name="fivethirtyeight"/><ref name="picbreeder">{{cite news |last1=Hutson |first1=Matthew |title=Computers Evolve a New Path Toward Human Intelligence |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/computers-evolve-a-new-path-toward-human-intelligence-20191106/ |access-date=9 June 2022 |work=Quanta Magazine |date=6 November 2019 |language=en}}</ref>

As the director of EPlex, he then served as the faculty advisor and as a software developer for Erin Hastings' Galactic Arms Race. First released in 2010, it is a space shooter that uses cgNEAT technology. cgNEAT or "content generating NEAT" is a variant of NEAT developed by Hastings and Stanley that "automatically generates graphical and game content while the game is played, based on the past preferences of the players".<ref name="eplex"/><ref name="cgneat">{{cite journal |last1=Hastings |first1=Erin Jonathan |last2=Guha |first2=Ratan K. |last3=Stanley |first3=Kenneth O. |title=Automatic Content Generation in the Galactic Arms Race Video Game |journal=IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games |date=December 2009 |volume=1 |issue=4 |pages=245–263 |doi=10.1109/TCIAIG.2009.2038365 |bibcode=2009ITCIA...1..245H |s2cid=88411 |issn=1943-0698}}</ref><ref name="gamedevmag">{{cite news |last1=Fleming |first1=Jeffrey |title=Galactic Arms Race: Evolving the Shooter |url=http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~hastings/papers/gameDevMag_Apr2010.pdf |access-date=9 June 2022 |work=Game Developer Magazine |date=April 2010}}</ref>

In 2015, he coauthored ''Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective'' with Joel Lehman. Inspired by his work with PicBreeder and other research, they discuss how intentionally pursuing objectives can limit your success at achieving them, both for people and AI. According to the book, pursuing novelty instead of an objective is more likely to succeed in creative tasks.<ref name="fivethirtyeight"/> They argue that this could be a more effective way of funding scientific research or could as a way of running a business.<ref name="hbr">{{cite news |last1=Smart |first1=Andrew J. |title=How Overfocusing on Goals Can Hold Us Back |url=https://hbr.org/2016/03/how-overfocusing-on-goals-can-hold-us-back |access-date=9 June 2022 |work=Harvard Business Review |date=17 March 2016}}</ref> It received positive reviews with one reviewer writing that, "If you are yearning to do what’s interesting, rather than optimizing a 'metric' of approach to a prescribed 'objective', you will love this book."<ref name="review">{{cite journal |last1=Hersh |first1=Reuben |title=Novelty Wins, "Straight Toward Objective" Loses! or Book Review: Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, by Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman |journal=Journal of Humanistic Mathematics |date=July 2015 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=161–165 |doi=10.5642/jhummath.201502.15 |url=https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1286&context=jhm|doi-access=free }}</ref>

In 2015, he co-founded Geometric Intelligence a private research and development firm focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning with Gary Marcus, Zoubin Ghahramani, and Doug Bemis.<ref name="ucfgeo" /> Uber acquired the firm in late 2016 and renamed it to Uber AI labs.<ref name="uberacquires"/> He continued working at the firm after its acquisition as a senior research science manager and the head of Core AI research.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kenneth O. Stanley |url=https://www.oreilly.com/people/kenneth-stanley/#:~:text=Stanley-,Kenneth%20O.,AI%20research%20at%20Uber%20Labs. |website=O’Reilly Media |access-date=9 June 2022}}</ref> He left both Uber AI Labs and the University of Central Florida in 2020 to lead the Open-Endedness team at OpenAI as a Research Science Manager.<ref name="linkedin"/> In 2017, Stanley won the ''2017 ISAL Award for Outstanding Paper of the Decade 2002 – 2012'' for his original 2002 NEAT paper with Risto Miikkulainen.<ref name="isalaward">{{cite web |title=2017 ISAL Awards: Winners |url=https://alife.org/2017-isal-awards-winners/ |website=Artificial Life |access-date=9 June 2022 |date=16 September 2017}}</ref> After leaving OpenAI, he co-founded Maven, an open-ended social network, where he was CEO before leaving the company three months later due to a lack of traction.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bellan |first=Rebecca |date=2024-08-07 |title=Newly launched social network Maven loses its co-founders |url=https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/07/newly-launched-social-network-maven-loses-its-co-founders/ |access-date=2026-03-21 |website=TechCrunch |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Bellan |first=Rebecca |date=2024-05-26 |title=How Maven’s AI-run ‘serendipity network’ can make social media interesting again |url=https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/26/how-mavens-ai-run-serendipity-network-can-make-social-media-interesting-again/ |access-date=2026-03-21 |website=TechCrunch |language=en-US}}</ref> As of 2025, he is SVP of open-endedness at Lila Sciences.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Zeff |first=Maxwell |date=2025-03-19 |title=The AI leaders bringing the AGI debate down to Earth |url=https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/19/the-ai-leaders-bringing-the-agi-debate-down-to-earth/ |access-date=2026-03-21 |website=TechCrunch |language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Baratham-Green |first=Hannah |date=2025-10-20 |title= Why the whole world is watching one fast-growing Cambridge lab AI firm |url=https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2025/10/20/lila-sciences-2025-recao.html |work=Boston Business Journal}}</ref>

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== *[https://www.cs.ucf.edu/~kstanley/ Website]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanley, Kenneth}} Category:Living people Category:Artificial intelligence researchers Category:University of Central Florida faculty Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni Category:American computer scientists Category:Newton South High School alumni Category:OpenAI people Category:Uber people Category:Year of birth missing (living people)