Fueling Innovation Engines - Creating, Collecting, and Improving Stepping Stones

Explore a thought-provoking keynote address that delves into the concept of fueling innovation engines through the creation, collection, and improvement of stepping stones. Discover how goal switching and quality diversity algorithms play crucial roles in scientific, technological, and evolutionary innovation. Learn about the paradox of generating problems to drive progress and the importance of qualitatively different approaches. Gain insights into innovative concepts such as Go-Explore, which tackles challenging problems like Montezuma's Revenge, and the Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer (POET) algorithm for solving complex obstacle courses. Examine the limitations of direct optimization and curriculum-based approaches, and understand why goal switching is essential for overcoming the most difficult challenges. Investigate AI-generating algorithms and draw parallels between the open-source community and quality diversity algorithms. Conclude with valuable thoughts on the open-source community's role in driving innovation and explore additional open-source projects at Uber.

Intro
A Paradox
Key for Science, Technological & Evolutionary Innovation: Generating Problems, Goal Switching
Quality Diversity Algorithms
Qualitatively Different
Goal Switching is Essential for Success
Innovation Engines
Goal Switching Enables Good Ideas to Spread
nature
Go-Explore: Solves Montezuma's Revenge
What's missing?
Paired Open-Ended Trailblazer (POET)
Task: Obstacle Courses
Another Challenging Environment
Direct Optimization Fails
Direct Path Curriculum Fails
Goal Switching Needed to solve the Hardest Challenges
Al-Generating Algorithms
The open-source community acts like a QD algorithm
More Open Source Projects at Uber
Thoughts for Open Source Community