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On Intelligence - take-away lessons

Some take-away lessons from On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins...

The book concentrates on the neocortext (aka the cortex), a cauliflower-like sheet of tissue on the outer surface of the brain. "Almost everything we think of as intelligence — perception, language, mathematics, art, music, and planning — occurs here. your neocortex is reading this weblog entry.

The average human neocortex, spread out, would be about the size of an unfolded dinner napkin, built of 6 layers, in total about the thickness of a 6 business cards. Anatomists estimate the typical human neocortex to contain around 30 billion neurons (perhaps less, perhaps more). These cells contain all of your memories, knowledge, skills, and life experience. They are "you".

The hippocampus is the "uppermost" level of the neocortex. That's pretty neat. The hippocampus creates longterm memories (which are then stored in the neocortext).

On Intelligence

Why hasn't Artificial Intelligence taken off? Why don't we have robots? How "smart" is your car? What is "intelligence" after all? Where does creativity enter the equation? Is the brain just a computer without the silicon?

Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence (written with co-author Sandra Blakeslee) addresses these questions and does an admirable job. Hawkins is the original architect of the Palm computer; Blakeslee is a 30-year veteran science writer for the NY Times.

The gist of the book is Hawkins' personal theory of intelligence and why AI has never gone anywhere, and will continue to go nowhere, until we change our way of thinking about Intelligence. He says this isn't a completely new theory but apparently the bits and pieces haven't been presented in a coherent and persuasive whole before.

The book is written very clearly in a nice, readable, conversational style. Although I suspect that much of the wordsmithing is Ms. Blakeslees, the ideas are all from Jeff Hawkins, representing thoughts and theories he's been formulating since 1979.

Jeff's theory is that AI hasn't worked (and won't work) because computer scientists dismiss the brain and how it works, deciding that "we can do better". Many AI "experts" insist that AI is just around the corner -- AI will be great "just as soon as we have faster more powerful computers".