Kenneth Stanley

Timeline

1. 2004

   A doctorate at UT Austin

   At the University of Texas at Austin, he completes a PhD in 2004 under Risto Miikkulainen, for work on the NEAT neuroevolution algorithm.

2. 2006–2020

   Associate professor at UCF

   He becomes an associate professor of computer science at the University of Central Florida in 2006. He also holds the Charles Millican Professor title there.

3. 2007

   PicBreeder and the steppingstone idea

   In 2007 he creates PicBreeder, software that lets users evolve pictures by choosing which images produce children. Watching the evolved pictures leads him to the steppingstone principle.

4. 2015

   Why greatness cannot be planned

   With Joel Lehman, he coauthors Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, a book published by Springer in 2015. The book argues that intentionally pursuing objectives can limit success for people and for AI.

5. 2015–2016

   Co-founding Geometric Intelligence

   In 2015 he co-founds Geometric Intelligence with Gary Marcus, Zoubin Ghahramani, and Doug Bemis. Uber acquires the firm in late 2016 and renames it Uber AI Labs.

6. 2017

   Outstanding paper of the decade

   The International Society for Artificial Life gives its 2017 Outstanding Paper of the Decade award to the 2002 paper Evolving neural networks through augmenting topologies, written with Risto Miikkulainen.

7. 2020

   Open-endedness team at OpenAI

   In 2020 he leaves Uber AI Labs and the University of Central Florida to lead the Open-Endedness team at OpenAI as a Research Science Manager.

8. As of October 2026

   Senior vice president at Lila Sciences

   He is Senior Vice President of Open-Endedness at Lila Sciences, where he leads the development of methods for continual, open-ended discovery and creativity in AI systems.