80 Why greatness cannot be planned with Kenneth Stanley

Ken Stanley is a highly regarded researcher in machine learning and artificial intelligence. After leaving his professorship at the University of Central Florida, he cofounded Geometric Intelligence (now Uber AI Labs), and he is now Senior Vice President of Open-Endedness at LilaSciences. In this episode, Ken explains why ambitious objectives often backfire : the real stepping stones to breakthrough discoveries rarely look like progress toward the goal, so a direct pursuit can blind us to the opportunities that matter most. Together, we connect these ideas to night science , scientific intuition, and the pressure to justify research with hypotheses and deliverables, and we argue for a healthier system that funds exploration, curiosity, and the creation of new “playgrounds” for discovery . The Night Science Podcast is produced by the Night Science Institute . For more information on Night Science, visit night-science.org .

You can listen to 80 Why greatness cannot be planned with Kenneth Stanley online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

80 Why greatness cannot be planned with Kenneth Stanley is an episode from Night Science by Itai Yanai & Martin Lercher.

This episode is 31:54 long.

This episode was published on Dec 29, 2025.

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