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The Autotelic Interaction Research (AIR) group at the Dept. of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland is looking for 1 Doctoral Researcher (2+2 years) and 1 Postdoc (2 years)  to work on Computational Social Intrinsic Motivation (SIM) 

The project

Our goal is to advance social AI, i.e. artificial agents capable of supporting us proactively or reactively in a range of virtual or embodied tasks. However, existing social AI and artificial agents more generally still struggle in delivering reliable support in situations that were not anticipated at design-time, and their decision-making processes may be hard to understand by interaction partners or operators. This project tackles these challenges by advancing Social Intrinsic Motivation (SIM), i.e. computational models of intrinsic motivation applied to the interaction of multiple agents.  

Intrinsic motivation (IM), with curiosity being a well-known example, is crucial to human development, allowing us to acquire new knowledge and skills in the absence of specific tasks, and to adapt to new situations. Computational models of IM [*] inherit these properties, making artificial agents more independent of external instruction and allowing them to perform better in previously unknown tasks. Typically formalised in the framework of reinforcement learning, computational models of IM are not black boxes, which enables explanation of the emerging behaviour and supports trust by the AI’s designers and interaction partners. 

SIM seeks to leverage the power of IM in the interaction of multiple agents. One example could be motivating an AI to optimise their partner’s intrinsic motivation, thus empowering them through its own behaviour. Pioneering work led to exciting findings such as emergent support of human interaction partners across tasks and without external instruction [1-4] or considerably improved cooperation within societies of artificial agents [5,6]. These are only few examples and what defines SIM is an open question – to be addressed in this project.

This project sets out to develop a better understanding of the space of possible SIM, to systematically develop new models informed by psychology, and to evaluate them through large-scale simulation and user studies. These models will then be applied in next-generation videogame AI [e.g. 1,2] as a stepping stone to other high-impact applications, and as a means to study the human mind. The project not only seeks to advance AI through a human-centric lens, but also to produce insights into how motivation guides social interaction, advancing research beyond computer science. The AIR group supports this through a track record of research on single-agent computational IM [e.g. 7], SIM [e.g. 3], and translational research with psychology [e.g. 8].

Related publications from the AIR group & collaborators (underlined): 

[1] Guckelsberger, C., Salge, C. and Colton, S., 2016. Intrinsically motivated general companion npcs via coupled empowerment maximisation. In Proc. IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG). 

[2] Guckelsberger, C., Salge, C. and Togelius, J., 2018. New and surprising ways to be mean. In Proc. IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG).

[3] Guckelsberger, C., “Coupled Empowerment Maximisation (CEM)”. In: Guckelsberger, C., 2020. Intrinsic Motivation in Computational Creativity Applied to Videogames. PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London.

[4] Salge, C. and Polani, D., 2017. Empowerment as replacement for the three laws of robotics. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4.

[5] van der Heiden, T., van Hoof, H., Gavves, E. and Salge, C., 2022. Reliably Re-Acting to Partner’s Actions with the Social Intrinsic Motivation of Transfer Empowerment. In Proc. ALife, 2022.

[6] Jaques, N., Lazaridou, A., Hughes, E., Gulcehre, C., Ortega, P., Strouse, D.J., Leibo, J.Z. and De Freitas, N., 2019. Social influence as intrinsic motivation for multi-agent deep reinforcement learning. In Proc. ICML.

[7] Lintunen, E.M., Ady, N.M. and Guckelsberger, C., Diversity Progress for Goal Selection in Discriminability-Motivated RL. In Intrinsically-Motivated and Open-Ended Learning Workshop@ NeurIPS2024.

[8] Lintunen, E.M., Ady, N.M., Deterding, S. and Guckelsberger, C., 2025. Towards a Formal Theory of the Need for Competence via Computational Intrinsic Motivation. In Proc. CogSci 2025.

[*] of computational IM with further references.

Your role and goals 

The doctoral researcher and postdoc will closely work together and support each other on the: 

• Implementation of new, scalable SIM models  

• Design of large-scale simulation and user studies 

• Development of groundbreaking videogame AI applications based on these models 

• Tasks that support the group’s understanding of SIM, such as systematic reviews of existing work, participation in reading groups, etc. 

Candidates will have opportunities to leverage any prior expertise or special interests in computational IM throughout the project, and especially in the development of new SIM models. 

Candidates should moreover invest 5-10% of their time to develop their skills in co-supervising BSc/MSc thesis and/or teaching. The postdoc may be given the opportunity for doctoral co-supervision.  

Your experience and ambitions 

As the ideal candidate, you should be smart, open-minded and independent while being capable and interested in collaborative work within the group and beyond. More specifically, you should demonstrate:  

Doctoral Researcher:  

• Experience (e.g. projects, coursework) in reinforcement learning  

• Interest in computational intrinsic motivation  

• Openness to conducting qualitative/quantitative user studies 

• Merit: Interest in videogames / knowledge of game AI 

• Merit: Interest in (social) psychology 

Postdoc:  

• Excellent research track record in reinforcement learning 

• Demonstrated expertise in computational intrinsic motivation  

• Merit: Existing expertise in multi-agent reinforcement learning 

• Merit: Interest in (social) psychology 

Your network and team 

You will become part of the AIR group () and benefit from close interaction with other doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, covering a diverse range of topics within computational IM and adjacent fields such as intrinsically motivated skill diversity, artificial curiosity, computational creativity and the human perception of AI creativity. You will be supervised by group lead Asst. Prof. Christian Guckelsberger.  

Beyond the group, you will be able to interact with the project’s interdisciplinary collaborators (Prof. Daniel Polani & Dr. Christoph Salge; University of Hertfordshire) and mobility partners (Prof. Natasha Jaques, Univ. of Washington; Prof. Sebastian Deterding, Imperial College London; Prof. Julian Togelius; New York University), who are leading experts in their respective areas. 

More widely, you will benefit from the rich AI ecosystem at Aalto and the University of Helsinki, e.g. taking part in events hosted within the Finnish Center for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI, fcai.fi) and ELLIS institute Finland, a new hub bringing together the best AI talent in Europe as part of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS, ellisinstitute.fi). 

What we offer 

You will become part of a young and inclusive research group and receive a competitive salary: 

• Postdoc: 4037,49-4218,12 Euro / month, depending on experience 

• Doctoral researcher: 2747,07-3424,16 Euro / month, depending on PhD progress.   

You can use tool to calculate your net income.  

The successful candidates will receive additional funding to regularly attend international conferences and join the PI on research mobility to broaden their networks and further promote their work.  

The contract moreover includes comprehensive occupational health benefits, in addition to membership in Finland’s social security system. Aalto University’s main campus is located 15 min from downtown Helsinki and surrounded by nature. Helsinki offers excellent flight connections to destinations around the world.  

Finland is a great place for living with or without family – it is a safe, politically stable and well-organized Nordic society. Finland offers a high quality of life and has been ranked as the happiest country on earth for eight years consecutively (). You can find more information about living in Finland here.  

Ready to apply? 

To join our community, please submit your application through our recruitment system Workday. There is no deadline to this application (please ignore the 'application closes on' above): the position will be filled as soon as a suitable candidate has been identified, and this page will be updated accordingly. 

To apply, please upload the following materials in a single pdf file: 

• Motivation letter (at most 1 page) 

• Up-to-date CV 

• Doctoral researchers: study transcript 

• Postdocs (and doctoral researchers, if applicable): publication list with 1 key publication highlighted. Please briefly (1 paragraph) motivate the relevance of the latter for these positions. 

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions about your (potential) application before submitting. We will first collect applications; please do not expect an immediate reply to your application.

Please note: Aalto University’s employees and visitors should apply for the position via our internal system Workday -> find jobs (not external aalto.fi webpage on open positions) by using their existing Workday user account. 

Aalto University reserves the right for justified reasons to leave the position open, to extend the application period, reopen the application process, and to consider candidates who have not submitted applications during the application period. 

Further information 

• Asst. Professor Christian Guckelsberger: email "firstname.lastname@aalto.fi" (for research related questions), social media: @creativeEndvs (Bluesky), creativeEndvs@sigmoid.social (Mastodon).  

• Autotelic Interaction Research (AIR) group: www.autotelic.science 

• HR Advisor Susanna Holma, e-mail "hr-cs@aalto.fi" (for questions on the recruitment process and Aalto more generally) 

About Aalto University / Aalto Computer Science 

Aalto University is a community of bold thinkers where science and art meet technology and business. We are committed to identifying and solving grand societal challenges and building an innovative future. Aalto has six schools with 14 000 students and a staff of 5000, of which more than 400 are professors. Our main campus is located in Espoo, Finland, 15 minutes from downtown Helsinki. Diversity is part of who we are, and we actively work to ensure our community’s diversity and inclusiveness. This is why we warmly encourage qualified candidates from all backgrounds to join our community. 

The Department of Computer Science is an internationally-oriented community and home to world-class research in modern computer science, combining research on foundations and innovative applications. With over 40 professors and more than 450 employees from 50 countries, it is the largest department at Aalto University and the leading computer science research unit in northern Europe. Computer science research at Aalto University ranks high in several international surveys (7th in Europe and 1st in the Nordics, NTU 2023; and top 100 worldwide in Times Higher Education subject ranking 2025). 

Want to know more about us and your future colleagues? Here’s some resources: 

• Web: aalto.fi.  

• Bluesky: @aalto.fi  

• Facebook: facebook.com/aaltouniversity 

• Instagram: instagram.com/aaltouniversity 

• Video: , , and .  

• Webpage about Aalto and Finland. /en/services/welcome-to-aalto-university-and-finland-info-package   

• Check out our new virtual campus experience: ! 

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