Nadia Ady (she/they) is an artificial intelligence researcher who is particularly excited about the possibilities for imbuing machines with traits of creativity and curiosity. Her recent work has aimed to help us achieve the benefits of specific curiosity in machine learners, better understand the landscape of intrinsically motivated learning algorithms, and explore the implications of translating concepts (like curiosity and creativity) from human psychology into artificial intelligence. Nadia completed a Ph.D. at the University of Alberta in 2023, working in the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab under the supervision of Patrick M. Pilarski. She is now working in the Autotelic Interaction Research Group at Aalto Computer Science, led by Christian Guckelsberger. Nadia is keen to explore the HIIT community for engaging discussions and future collaborations.
Sample of publications:
[1] Sebastian Deterding, Christian Guckelsberger, Erik Lintunen, Nadia Ady. 2025. Advancing Self-Determination Theory via computational modelling: the case of competence and optimal challenge. Motivation and Emotion. Advance online publication.
[2] Erik Lintunen, Nadia Ady, Sebastian Deterding, Christian Guckelsberger. 2025. Towards a Formal Specification of the Need for Competence. Poster session presented at Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, Dublin, Ireland.
[3] Erik Lintunen, Nadia Ady, Sebastian Deterding, Christian Guckelsberger. 2025. Towards a Formal Theory of the Need for Competence via Computational Intrinsic Motivation. In Proceedings of the 47th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society; Vol. 47). Cognitive Science Society.
[4] Erik Lintunen, Nadia Ady, Christian Guckelsberger. 2025. What To Practise Next? Using Diversity Progress To Select From Discriminability-Motivated Goals. Poster session presented at Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, Dublin, Ireland.