Speaker : Pierre-Yves OUDEYER, Research director at Inria Center of University of Bordeaux
"Curiosity in human development: theories, experiments and applications in AI and education"
Children learn very diverse skills with remarkable autonomy, efficiency and open-endedness despite limited time and energy: I will discuss the central roles of mechanisms of curiosity in this extraordinary feat. Drawing on theory, AI modeling, and behavioural experiments, I will present three complementary accounts:
- Learning Progress theory, linking curiosity to metacognition and long-term developmental self-organization;
- Autotelic exploration, where individuals generate and pursue their own goals;
- Language as a tool that amplifies creative, curiosity-driven exploration.
I will illustrate, through various experiments, how there perspectives not only illuminate human development but also inform open-ended AI and autotelic robots learning in real-world environments. I will close with applications in the domain of education, with classroom interventions that translate these insights into training children's curiosity, such as curious question-asking.
If you would like to meet the speaker, please contact us.
Conference location
Please join the conference in Paris Brain Institute auditorium.