Everything in society can seem geared toward optimization, whether it's standardized testing or artificial intelligence algorithms. They teach us to know what outcome you want to achieve and to find the path to get there.
Kenneth Stanleyformer OpenAI researcher and co-founder of a new social media platform called expert, has been preaching for years that this method of thinking is counterproductive, if not outright harmful. Instead of prioritizing goals, Stanley says we should prioritize serendipity.
“Sometimes, to find those stepping stones to the things we care about, we have to get off the path of purpose and onto the path of interesting,” Stanley told TechCrunch in a video interview. “Serendipity is the opposite of finding something through goals.”
The idea of seeking novelty for its own sake began as an algorithmic concept that Stanley's studies called open charactera subfield of AI research into systems that “keep producing interesting things forever.”
“Open systems are like artificially creative systems,” Stanley said, noting that humans, evolution and civilization are also open systems that continue to build on themselves in unexpected ways.
This algorithmic vision became a philosophy of life for Stanley. He even wrote a book about it in 2015 with his former PhD student Joel Lehman called Why you can't plan for greatness. The concept took off, turning Stanley into a kind of international focal point for the cheeky idea that you can actually do things simply because they're interesting, rather than because you need to complete some stated objective.
But in 2022, while leading an open-ended team at OpenAI, Stanley said he was “seething with discontent” and “had this epiphany” in which he decided to stop talking about bringing open nature to broader audiences and instead, start doing something about it. .
What if, he wondered, he created a “serendipity network,” a system set up to increase the likelihood that serendipity could be enjoyed by other people?
So he left his job and set out to create Maven, a social network built around an open artificial intelligence algorithm that evolves to search for news. Upon signing up, users select a series of topics to follow (from neuroscience to parenting) and the algorithm shows them posts that align with their interests. There are no likes, upvotes, retweets or followers, and no way to amplify the content to the masses.
Instead, when a user posts something, the algorithm automatically reads the content and tags it with relevant interests so it appears on those pages. Users can move up the serendipity slider to go beyond their stated interests, and the algorithm that runs the platform matches users with related interests. So if, for example, you're following conversations about urban planning, Maven could also suggest conversations about public transportation.
And while there's no way to follow people on the platform, you can see and connect with other people who follow topics that interest you.
In many ways, Maven feels like an antidote to today's social media, where the “objective paradox is on display” as people go out of their way to create sensational content that will attract more attention and popularity.
“The echo chambers and toxicity, amplification of narcissism and personal branding have gotten totally out of control, so people are losing their souls and becoming brands,” Stanley said.
He addictive qualities of social networks, damage to mental health in adolescents and adults, and the ability to polarize nations It is well documented. These, says Stanley, are the unintended consequences of ambitious goals, the result of making popularity an indicator of quality.
“And then you get all these other things because once you have popularity, you have perverse incentives,” he said.
Stanley noted that Maven users can flag inappropriate content or misinformation when it appears, and its AI is actively monitoring for highly inflammatory, offensive content “or worse.” He said Maven can't fix the evil of human nature, but by removing the incentives behind sharing such content, Stanley hopes it can change the “overall aggregate dynamics of how people behave.”
Some social media companies have tried to combat those incentives in the past. The OG of posting random content was Stumble upona browser extension and app created by entrepreneur Garrett Camp, years before he co-founded Uber. Instagram in 2019 Then he tried hiding the “likes” to stop comparisons and hurt the feelings that come with giving popularity to content. X, formerly Twitter, is getting ready to make likes private, too, but for less healthy reasons. In a line of thinking heavily inspired by Elon Musk,
Maven is less interested in connecting users to the audience and more focused on connecting them to what's interesting.
The monetization problem
Stanley and his co-founders, Blas Moros and Jimmy Secretan, launched Maven in late January. The platform debuted publicly in May along with a cabling feature that Stanley says gave Maven a top trending spot in Product Search and generated thousands of records.
These are still small numbers compared to other new entrants in the social media space. Blue sky, which was released in 2021, has had 5.6 million registrations. Starting January 2024, Mastodon had 1.8 million Active users. Farcaster, a new crypto-based social protocol that just raised $150 million, has counted around 350,000 registrations. All of these new networks will need to grow significantly to be considered successful.
It is still an open question as to whether Maven will even be able to grow its user base without the very toxic qualities that we love to hate, but which nevertheless drag us back into the cesspool that is social media.
Maven raised $2 million in 2023 in a round led by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, Stanley told TechCrunch. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also participated in the round. Stanley said Williams and Altman invested because, like many of us who have become beloved by Maven's almost-too-sweet-for-this-world spirit, they believe the world and the Internet need something like this.
And indeed, Maven's idealistic hope to connect people with interesting ideas is reminiscent of the early 2000s, when the Internet was a place of connection and exploration. The sentiments of the platform's early adopters are mostly positive and optimistic, as many came to the platform in search of genuine, serendipitous interactions and the promised freedom from toxicity.
But will idealism be enough to attract more institutional investors later, when Maven wants to grow?
“I think the challenge we face is that, in the future, it becomes an increasingly difficult way to raise money,” Stanley said, noting that investors won't waste millions unless there is a clear path to a return of your investment.
“I just need to find the right investors in the future and quickly come up with a sustainable business model,” he continued, musing on the idea of a subscription model that would allow Maven to keep its ideology intact.
Of course, there are other ways Maven can generate revenue. Advertising is a path, but one that appeals less to Stanley because of how linked it is to virality and sensationalism.
In the future, Maven could also sell its data to companies like OpenAI that are training their algorithms with large amounts of data. OpenAI earlier this month signed an agreement with Reddit to train your AI with the social media company's data. And Maven's value proposition from an AI standpoint is not just the content of the platform, but the open algorithm that runs it.
Stanley told TechCrunch that he believes openness is essential for artificial general intelligence (AGI), a type of AI that aims to match or surpass human capabilities in a variety of cognitive tasks. Openness is “a very prominent aspect of being smart,” Stanley said. “It's like this creative aspect and also driven by human curiosity.”
“Data is interesting from an AI perspective, because it's data about what's interesting,” Stanley said, noting that current AI models lack the intuitive understanding of what's interesting and what's not, and how that can change over time. However, while the data has potential value for AI, Stanley said Maven does not have any agreements with any company to grant access to that data.
And while he said he hasn't ruled out that possibility in the future, he would think very carefully about what the implications of sharing that data would be.
“That's not the point of this for me,” he said, noting that he's not convinced it would be good for neural networks to be completely open because that could make any creative efforts on the part of humans completely useless.
“I really wanted to create this serendipitous community globally,” he said. “It's not that I have a parallel plan: we will use Maven to create open AI or something like that. I just wanted to create something for people because I started to feel like everyone would talk to chatbots more and more and we'd be less and less connected to other people. And I contributed to it by being an AI researcher.”
“Something about this idea of a serendipity network made me feel morally better, like I could really contribute to people being more connected instead of less.”
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