Postdoctoral Researcher Position (2 Years) Project: Autotelic Creative Artificial Intelligence (Acai)

Postdoctoral Researcher Position (2 years)

Project: Autotelic Creative Artificial Intelligence (ACAI)

Supervisor & team:

Prof. Christian Guckelsberger (Asst. Prof. for Creative Technologies, School of Science)

Team: Autotelic Interaction Research (AIR) group at Aalto University: www.autotelic.science

The project is supported by collaborators and mobility partners Prof. Tom Froese (OIST), Prof. Jon McCormack (Monash University) and Prof. Takashi Ikegami (University of Tokyo).

Application deadline & starting date:

Please submit your application by Friday, 11th Sep 2026. Starting date: we can offer flexibility weighed by the candidate’s qualification, but a suitable candidate could also start right away.

The project:

We are advertising a fully paid, 2-year postdoctoral researcher position at Aalto University’s School of Science, Department of Computer Science, to work on the project “Autotelic Creative Artificial Intelligence” (ACAI).

Critical at its core, the ACAI project seeks to identify alternative and sustainable paths to “mainstream” creative AI. Rather than optimizing systems to replicate established human aesthetics or processes, we investigate the conditions under which AI might operate as a genuinely creative agent. Amongst other questions, we ask: Can AI be creative in its own right, rather than emulating human creativity? Can such AI be autotelic, i.e., define its own goals and methods of inquiry? What forms of autotelic creativity exist in nature, and might we miss them given our situatedness?

To further these questions, we will rely on the candidate to study the foundations of creativity in AI and living beings, including e.g. agency, motivation/teleology and value grounding.

Crucially, this project seeks to combine such theoretic research with the critical artistic practice of a media art PhD researcher. Through regular interaction and individual exploration, the theoretical research will inspire the artistic practice to articulate our findings in speculative AI futures, providing the basis for wider engagement with other theorists, creatives and the wider public (via exhibitions, art commissions, and public engagement). Vice versa, the successful candidate will be expected to engage with art and artists to support their research process, which presents the challenge and opportunity to engage with very different expertise and epistemologies.

Through this research programme, ACAI aims to critically assess both the positively and negatively transformative societal implications of creative AI, while contributing new theoretical, artistic, and technical frameworks for understanding creativity beyond the human realm. The focus is not on shaping AI research through insights from its present use in artistic practice, but on advancing publications and evocative speculative futures to further critical engagement in different communities within academia and beyond. Artists are considered as equal contributors to the research.

The position:

We seek a creative and open-minded postdoctoral researcher who is intellectually and technologically curious, disciplinarily promiscuous, investigative in their research and who enjoys convening and dialoguing across genres led by their (post)humanist values.

We welcome submissions from applicants from a diverse range of disciplines such as cogsci, computer science, philosophy, psychology, and theoretical biology (not exhaustive and in no particular order) who can demonstrate (also via publications) an interest in AI and creativity, a critical mind, the ability to work formally and with theory, and expertise with one or several of the following concepts: machine creativity, agency, autonomy, motivation/teleology, value grounding and open-endedness. If in doubt, please contact us with your profile prior to submission.

The ideal candidate is a reflective thinker with the ability and motivation to:

1) Survey and translate between research on a wide range of relevant concepts (above).

2) Engage with different types of research, including e.g. empirical studies from Psychology on animal creativity and AI papers on formal accounts of agency (examples below).

3) Communicate their insights at an appropriate level of abstraction to the artistic member of the team and, vice versa, engage with the artistic work to inform their research.

A strong application will support each point by reference to past activities. Next to research synthesis, ACAI has space for the candidate to advance specific research on any of the involved concepts. Next to contributing to ACAI’s milestones, the postdoc will be given time to pursue their own projects which should nonetheless link to the group’s interests (see website). Throughout the project, they will be interacting closely with the artist and supervisor.

Location, duties & compensation:

Aalto is located in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. The applicant is expected to relocate.

The position is for 2 years and compensated with 4229 EUR/month , which is complemented with an annual holiday bonus and occupational healthcare benefits.

The candidate is expected to dedicate 5-30% of their time to teaching (e.g. lectures, teaching support, supervision of theses), matched with their individual skills and research. Moreover, they are expected to engage in overseas travel (e.g. research collaborations and conferences).

For their net income, candidates can check out vero.fi calculators. For an overview of living costs in Finland and the Helsinki metropolitan area, see https://infofinland.fi/settling-in-finland.

How to apply:

Please submit the following documents via our Workday system (“apply now”).

• Cover letter (1 page, A4, 11pt): please motivate, without fabulation, your interest in this project and describe your fit to the job ad with reference to prior accomplishments as further detailed in further documents. Please use emphasis for your key points.
• Up-to-date CV: incl. contact details of two academic/professional references (no letters).
• List of publications: including a link to your Google Scholar profile. Please select at most five publications and argue how they fit this project (justification at most 1 page, A4).

We encourage candidates with diverse backgrounds to apply, especially if their specific discipline was not listed above but fits with the project’s questions and concepts.

Example literature:

The applicant is expected to be interested in and capable of engaging with literature such as:

• Froese, T., Weber, N., Shpurov, I. and Ikegami, T., 2023. From autopoiesis to self-optimization: Toward an enactive model of biological regulation. Biosystems, 230.
• Epstein, R., 2015. Of course animals are creative: Insights from generativity theory. In Animal creativity and innovation (pp. 375-393). Academic Press.
• Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L., 2000. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), pp.54-67.
• Jääskeläinen, Holzapfel & Eriksson. 2024. AI Art for Self-Interest or Common Good? Uncovering Value Tensions in Artists’ Imaginaries of AI Technologies. In Proc. DIS.
• Weber, N., Guckelsberger, C. and Froese, T., 2025. Untapped Potential in Self-Optimization of Hopfield Networks: The Creativity of Unsupervised Learning. Artificial Life, 31(4).

Further Information:

• For questions on the position: Christian Guckelsberger (christian.guckelsberger@aalto.fi)

• For HR-related questions: Susanna Holma (hr-cs@aalto.fi)
• Autotelic Interaction Research Group: www.autotelic.science

We are looking forward to your application!

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