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A review by davesag
On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines by Sandra Blakeslee, Jeff Hawkins
5.0
Jeff Hawkins has done a remarkable thing. He's essentially synthesised all of the information we have on how the brain works into a simple, elegant and utterly comprehensible theory of intelligence that will pave the way to the creation of truly intelligent machines. That's a massive claim I know but I honestly don't think I have ever read a simpler, more straightforward account of what intelligence is.
Hawkins' theory, in a nutshell, is that intelligence is a manifestation of the brains ability to predict the future and test its perceptions against its predictions. Like a fractal there is a mass of self-similarity at work here. At the very fine-grained level the predictions the brains making are very mundane but as sensory information is handled, and exceptions passed up the hierarchy, and predictions passed back down the hierarchy, our brains learn from their experiences and, over time a genuine, common understanding of the world emerges.
Anyone working on machine intelligence should read this short, simple book.
Hawkins' theory, in a nutshell, is that intelligence is a manifestation of the brains ability to predict the future and test its perceptions against its predictions. Like a fractal there is a mass of self-similarity at work here. At the very fine-grained level the predictions the brains making are very mundane but as sensory information is handled, and exceptions passed up the hierarchy, and predictions passed back down the hierarchy, our brains learn from their experiences and, over time a genuine, common understanding of the world emerges.
Anyone working on machine intelligence should read this short, simple book.