Two Notions OnIntelligence

Hawkins, Jeff (2004). On Intelligence. How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines.

I am currently reading “On Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot who now tries to make a fortune out of his own appraoch to artificial intelligence and brain science. Keeping in mind that his book is mainly a marketing and adverstising instrument for his company Numenta and for Redwood Neuroscience Research Institute, it is a really-damn-good-written-and-easy-to-understand book that delivers new insights into brain science (at least new to me).

There were already two take-aways catching my attention. The first is the notion of the brain as different to a computer in the fact that is actually does no computing at all. It is retrieving solutions to problems from memory. When you catch a ball you are not computing its movement by using the formula learnt at physics classes. Instead your brain’s neurons remember a sequence of movements from the last time you catched a ball.

The second interesting idea is the defintion of intelligence as the ability of the brain to predict every situation out of memory. It all hapens subliminal. New things only find our attention if they break an exisitng pattern. For instance: If you get home, open the door, put off you jacket like every night. This pattern of movements is stored in your neuerons and happens every day without you involvement. As soon as there is a change, say the dooknob turns blue, your attention level is raised. This happens because you brain always predicts every situation by filling in predictions from your memory.

I am looking forward reading to the end of the book.