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A review by jwynia
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
A while back, I saw an episode of Wired Science on PBS, featuring Jeff Hawkins (he founded Palm Computing) talking about the area of study that's pulled him in repeatedly: neuroscience. His description of the neocortex, including its similarity in size and thickness to a cloth dinner napkin and that thin layer of cells' pretty much *being* the thing that makes us human intrigued me. So, I bought his book.
On Intelligence is the book on this list that took me the longest to actually get through. It's not particularly long or even hard to read. However, every chapter led me to ponder quite a bit. As a result, I tended to read this one in fits and starts over a few months.
The central premise is his theory and the science to back it up focuses on the general algorithm for the neocortex. Oversimplified, every portion of the neocortex just watches for and stores patterns, combining them and replaying them. That goes for sensory input, our own motor control, etc.
Ever since reading this book, I've been seeing more and more in day to day life that fits with this theory. Should his model for how the brain works turn out to be completely right, it will be huge, particularly in the area of computer-based [b:artificial intelligence|27543|Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach (2nd Edition)|Stuart J. Russell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167881696s/27543.jpg|1362].
I fully expect to continue mulling this one over for months and years to come.
On Intelligence is the book on this list that took me the longest to actually get through. It's not particularly long or even hard to read. However, every chapter led me to ponder quite a bit. As a result, I tended to read this one in fits and starts over a few months.
The central premise is his theory and the science to back it up focuses on the general algorithm for the neocortex. Oversimplified, every portion of the neocortex just watches for and stores patterns, combining them and replaying them. That goes for sensory input, our own motor control, etc.
Ever since reading this book, I've been seeing more and more in day to day life that fits with this theory. Should his model for how the brain works turn out to be completely right, it will be huge, particularly in the area of computer-based [b:artificial intelligence|27543|Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach (2nd Edition)|Stuart J. Russell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167881696s/27543.jpg|1362].
I fully expect to continue mulling this one over for months and years to come.