On Intelligence the Book and Jeff Hawkins starts a company
Jeff Hawkins, of Palm Pilot fame, has started a new company based on the ideas in his book and named it Numenta.
The book is well done and honest – he makes some predictions about how the brain works, and says that if his predictions are right, then certain discoveries will be made in the next few years. One thing that was interesting for me is that all senses, at a high level, work the same. There’s a hierarchical mesh of neurons and synapses on top of some “sensors”, or the low level nervous system. Signals are always processed in a similar manner, low level signals travel up thru the hierarchy and then a decision is made.
Also interesting is what he said is the essence of intelligence – the ability to make predictions. One example is as you’re waking, if you ever step into a hole, you instantly recognize this – some low level processes in your brain are continually making predictions about what a foot is gonna feel and how far a step will go, and when your foot goes too far down, suprise, boom, you know and it’s time to, I guess, jump!
The book’s web site is http://www.onintelligence.org/.
