Eurisko, AM's successor, did that: AM and Eurisko used a measure of interestingness to direct their searches. Here is one of Eurisko's inventions: From EURIS

Eurisko, AM's successor, did that: AM and Eurisko used a measure of interestingness to direct their searches. Here is one of Eurisko's inventions: From EURISKO: A program that learns new heuristics and domain concepts: "Almost immediately, symmetry heuristics produced a very powerful yet simple device, one which simultaneously computes NAND and OR, using only two small metal regions, two n-doped regions, two p-doped regions, and one intrinsic channel region."