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On Intelligence

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On Intelligence

By: Jeff Hawkins   Sandra Blakeslee  

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Description:
From the inventor of the PalmPilot comes a new and compelling theory of intelligence, brain function, and the future of intelligent machines

Jeff Hawkins, the man who created the PalmPilot, Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, has reshaped our relationship to computers. Now he stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke, with a new understanding of intelligence itself.

Hawkins develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines.

The brain is not a computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness.

In an engaging style that will captivate audiences from the merely curious to the professional scientist, Hawkins shows how a clear understanding of how the brain works will make it possible for us to build intelligent machines, in silicon, that will exceed our human ability in surprising ways.

Written with acclaimed science writer Sandra Blakeslee, On Intelligence promises to completely transfigure the possibilities of the technology age. It is a landmark book in its scope and clarity.
Jeff Hawkins is one of the most successful and highly regarded computer architects and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He founded Palm Computing and Handspring, created the Redwood Neuroscience Institute to promote research on memory and cognition, and is a member of the scientific board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. He lives in northern California.

Sandra Blakeslee has been writing about science and medicine for The New York Times for more than thirty years. She is the co-author of Phantoms in the Brain (with V. S. Ramachandran) and of Judith Wallerstein's bestselling books on psychology and marriage. She lives in Santa Fe.
Jeff Hawkins, who created the PalmPilot, the Treo smart phone, and other handheld devices, here presents a brilliant book that stands ready to revolutionize both neuroscience and computing in one stroke. Indeed, On Intelligence develops a powerful theory of how the human brain works, explaining why computers are not intelligent and how, based on this new theory, we can finally build intelligent machines. Previous attempts at replicating human intelligence—through artificial intelligence and neural networks—have not succeeded. Their mistake, Hawkins argues, was in trying to emulate human behavior without first understanding what intelligence is.

The brain is not a computer, supplying by rote an output for each input it receives. Instead, this book argues that the brain is a memory system that stores experiences in a way reflective of the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness. Intelligence, then, is the capacity of the brain to predict the future by analogy to the past.

In an engaging style that will captivate, stimulate, and speak clearly to all, On Intelligence explains what intelligence is, how the brain works, and how this knowledge will finally make it possible for us to build intelligent machines, in silicon, which will not simply imitate but exceed our human ability in surprising ways. This groundbreaking study will be a must for today's students and scholars of neuroscience, psychology, computing, and AI.
"I've read dozens of books about the human brain and how it works. On Intelligence, with its chatty style and cross-references to the computer technology so ubiquitous in our lives today, is far and away the best."—Lynn Yarris, San Jose Mercury News
"The man who created the PalmPilot and the Treo smart phone has one foot planted firmly in neuroscience and the other in computer science as his mind imagines fascinating new ways of combining the two."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"If Hawkins is right, his work will have practical implications far greater than anything he has invented so far."—Fortune

"Elegantly written . . . This book provides some provocative thoughts on how the brain and the mind may actually function."—Richard Lipkin, Scientific American

"Clear and punchy . . . With so many books published recently on minds, machines, and intelligence, it is becoming progressively more difficult to find their distinguishing features. Happily, Jeff Hawkins has a unique perspective, as one of the pioneers of hand-held electronic organizers and founder of the Palm Computing and Handspring companies . . . His hard-nosed grasp of complex digital-system design and his passion for neuroscience are the authoritative bases for this book . . . Hawkins makes an appealing case for the sort of computational analysis that is likely both to clarify how the brain works and to give artificial-intelligence systems a new grounding."—Igor Aleksander, emeritus professor of neural systems engineering at Imperial College London, Nature

"[This book] takes a detailed look at how the human brain works, compares this to how AI currently works, and concludes that our machines will never get there from here . . . Hawkins and Blakeslee make a terrific team that has produced a stellar book . . . [The authors] do an outstanding job of explaining the organizational architecture of the neocortex and the intricate way in which its six layers of cells are connected to one another, as well as to other cells in the brain. Through a series of vivid, easy-to-understand examples, they show why our brains may be data-processing tortoises compared with computer hares, but human intelligence can easily cross the finish lines that today's AI can't even find . . . I've read dozens of books about the human brain and how it works. On Intelligence, with its chatty style and cross-references to the computer technology so ubiquitous in our lives today, is far and away the best."—Lynn Yarris, The San Jose Mercury News

"On Intelligence will have a big impact; everyone should read it. In the same way that Erwin Schrödinger's 1943 classic What Is Life? made how molecules store genetic information the big problem for biology at that time, On Intelligence lays out the framework for understanding the brain."—James D. Watson, chancellor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the 1962 Nobel laureate in physiology

"A landmark book. On Intelligence is the first clear exposition of what could be the long-awaited 'great general theory' of human brain function. Loaded with intelligence, insight, and wisdom, it's a wonderfully readable account of the fundamental principles of the brain by a great American original."—Mike Merzenich, professor of neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco

"Brilliant and embued with startling clarity. On Intelligence is the most important book in neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence in a generation."—Malcolm Young, professor of biology and provost, University of Newcastle

"Read this book. Burn all the others. It is original, inventive, and thoughtful, from one of the world's foremost thinkers. Hawkins will change the way the world thinks about intelligence and the prospect of intelligent machines."—John Doerr, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

"Hawkins has written an original, thought-provoking, and, with the help of Sandra Blakeslee, remarkably readable book that presents a new theory of the functions of the cerebral cortex in perception, cognition, action, and intelligence. What is distinctive about his theory is the original way existing ideas about the cerebral cortex and its architecture have been combined and elaborated based on an extensive knowledge of how the brain works—what Hawkins calls Real Intelligence in contrast to computer-based Artificial Intelligence. As a result this book is a must-read for everyone who is curious about the brain or who wonders how it works. Many sections of this book, especially those on intelligence, creativity, and minds of silicon, are so thoughtful and original that they are likely to be required reading for college undergraduates for years to come."—Eric R. Kandel, professor, Columbia University, senior investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and 2000 Nobel laureate in medicine

"A remarkable synthesis of ideas. I predict it will have a major impact on neuroscience and neuroscientists."—Mriganka Sur, professor of neuroscience, department head of brain and cognitive sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"On Intelligence is a brilliantly presented and innovative hypothesis of how the brain works. Hawkins makes a convincing case that human perception is based upon expectations . . . that our minds predict what we will experience before we experience it, based on our memory of similar circumstances. We then pay attention to the differences . . . the sensory experiences that are not part of our expectations. Hawkins also proposes an innovative and credible mechanism for how this anticipatory thinking is implemented by the brain's circuitry, including a guide to what the experimental proof will look like. The theory provides insight as to why eyewitnesses to the same event will often differ in their recollection of what they saw, based on their different life exp...


Description:
Jeff Hawkins, the high-tech success story behind PalmPilots and the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, does a lot of thinking about thinking. In On Intelligence Hawkins juxtaposes his two loves--computers and brains--to examine the real future of artificial intelligence. In doing so, he unites two fields of study that have been moving uneasily toward one another for at least two decades. Most people think that computers are getting smarter, and that maybe someday, they'll be as smart as we humans are. But Hawkins explains why the way we build computers today won't take us down that path. He shows, using nicely accessible examples, that our brains are memory-driven systems that use our five senses and our perception of time, space, and consciousness in a way that's totally unlike the relatively simple structures of even the most complex computer chip. Readers who gobbled up Ray Kurzweil's (The Age of Spiritual Machines and Steven Johnson's Mind Wide Open will find more intriguing food for thought here. Hawkins does a good job of outlining current brain research for a general audience, and his enthusiasm for brains is surprisingly contagious. --Therese Littleton

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Release Date: 2005-07-14

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Beyond A.I. - a framework for understanding complex human behaviors - Although presenting more of a wiring diagram than an actual algorithm, this book conveys (quite understandingly) a synthesis of the brilliant discoveries and insights into the activity of the human neocortex. It is a great starting place for fresh directions in creating what most call artificial intelligence (perhaps more aptly called non-biological intelligence).
Although not the point of the book, Hawkins's framework of a hierarchical temporal memory prediction model, also goes a long way to explaining all kinds of human behavioral phenomena that one can observe in everyday life: interpersonal relations, perception, cognitive development, learning processes, false belief persistence, communication, miscommunication, personality disorders, mental illnesses, even dreaming.
I was also very glad to see the emphasis Hawkins puts on the hierarchical and temporal aspects of human perception, the importance of which so many people working on pattern recognition seem to underestimate. There is no such thing as "a" thought in a cardinal sense. It is all dynamic; it is all process; it is all interconnected.
While some readers have detected a mild arrogance in the tone of Hawkins' introduction, I found the tone to be rather matter-of-fact and nowhere near as self-absorbed as, say Benoit Mandelbrot, or Douglas Hofstadter.
Perhaps best of all, in the true scientific spirit, Hawkins makes testable predictions based on his framework, so that is theory can be disproved or refined.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Change the way you think about thinking. - This book will forever change the way you think about thinking. Jeff Hawkins revolutionized the computing world with Palm and then created his own neuroscience institute.

With compelling insights into perception and the way our brain works, Jeff Hawkins make a compelling argument that our brain isn't a computing machine, but rather a prediction engine.

If you've ever wondered why it takes PhD students months to code a robot to catch a ball or how our brains effortlessly and automatically correct for massive blind spots plus fish-eye lens and upside down visual inputs... then this book is for you.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Excellent and thought provoking - The best book I have read in a long time. The guy is so clever and insightful.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Excellent book, but I have one objection - The book is about Hawkins' theory of how the mammalian cortex, especially the human cortex, works. Hawkins thinks it is only by understanding the cortex that we will be able to build truly intelligent machines. Blakeslee has aided him in presenting this theory so that it is accessible by the general public. I am very impressed by the theory of the cortex, but I do not agree that the cortex is the only way to achieve intelligence.

Hawkins defines intelligence as the ability to make predictions. I think this is an excellent definition of intelligence.

He says the cortex makes predictions via memory. The rat in the maze has a memory which includes both the motor activity of turning right and the experience of food. This activates turning right again, which is equivalent to the prediction that if he turns right, food will occur.

The primate visual system, which is the sense best understood, has four cortical areas that are in a hierarchy. In the lowest area, at the back of the head, cells respond to edges in particular locations, sometimes to edges moving in specific directions. In the highest area you can find cells that respond to faces, sometimes particular faces, such as the face of Bill Clinton.

But the microscopic appearance of the cortex is basically the same everywhere. There is not even much difference between motor cortex and sensory cortex. The book makes sense of the connections found in all areas of the cortex.

The cortex is a sheet covering the brain composed of small adjacent columns of cells, each with six layers. Information from a lower cortical area excites the layer 4 of a column. Layer 4 cells excite cells in layers 2 and 3 of the same column, which in turn excite cells in layers 5 and 6. Layers 2 and 3 have connections to the higher cortical area. Layer 5 has motor connections (the visual area affects eye movements) and layer 6 connects to the lower cortical area. Layer 6 goes to the long fibers in layer 1 of the area below, which can excite layers 2 and or 3 in many columns.

So there are two ways of exciting a column. Either by the area below stimulating layer 4, or by the area above stimulating layers 2 and 3. The synapses from the area above are far from the cell bodies of the neurons, but Hawkins suggests that synapses far from the cell body may fire a cell if several synapses are activated simultaneously.

The lowest area, at the back of the head, is not actually the beginning of processing. It receives input from the thalamus, in the middle of the brain (which receives input from the eyes). Cells in the thalamus respond to small circle of light, and the first stage of processing is to convert this response to spots to response to moving edges.

And the highest visual area is not the end of the story. It connects to multisensory areas of the cortex, where vision is combined with hearing and touch, etc.

The very highest area is not cortex at all, but the hippocampus.

Perception always involves prediction. When we look at a face, our fixation point is constantly shifting, and we predict what the result of the next fixation will be.

According to Hawkins, when an area of the cortex knows what it is perceiving, it sends to the area below information on the name of the sequence, and where we are in the sequence. If the next item in the sequence agrees with what the higher area thought it should be, the lower area sends no information back up. But if something unexpected occurs, it transmits information up. If the higher area can interpret the event, it revises its output to the lower area, and sends nothing to the area above it.

But truly unexpected events will percolate all the way up to the hippocampus. It is the hippocampus that processes the truly novel, eventually storing the once novel sequence in the cortex. If the hippocampus on both sides is destroyed, the person may still be intelligent, but can learn nothing new (at least, no new declarative memory).

When building an artificial auto-associative memory, which can learn sequences, it is necessary to build in a delay so that the next item will be predicted when it will occur. Hawkins suggests that the necessary delay is embodied in the feedback loop between layer 5 and the nonspecific areas of the thalamus. A cell in a nonspecific thalamic area may stimulate many cortical cells.

I think this theory of how the cortex works makes a lot of sense, and I am grateful to Hawkins and Blakeslee for writing it in a book that is accessible to people with limited AI and neuroscience.

But I am not convinced that the mammalian cortex is the only way to achieve intelligence. Hawkins suggests that the rat walks and sniffs with its "reptilian brain", but needs the cortex to learn the correct turn in the maze. But alligators can learn mazes using only their reptilian brains. I would have been quite surprised if they could not.

Even bees can predict, using a brain of one cubic millimeter. Not only can they learn to locate a bowl of sugar water, if you move the bowl a little further away each day, the bee will go to the correct predicted location rather than to the last experienced location.

And large-brained birds achieve primate levels of intelligence without a cortex. The part of the forebrain that is enlarged in highly intelligent birds has a nuclear rather than a laminar (layered) structure. The parrot Alex had language and intelligence equivalent to a two year old human, and Aesop's fable of the crow that figured out to get what he wanted from the surface of the water by dropping stones in the water and raising the water level, has been replicated in crows presented with the problem.

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Challenged my thinking - This book provides some very stimulating insights into how human being go about the process of thinking and how the brain functions. It helps you understand why things like Artificial Inteliigence are no where near matching the marvel that is the human brain.

To get the most of this book you will need to sit down and concentrate because there is plenty in here to digest. It is not something I'd call bed time reading. If you are interested in learning how the human brain functions and what makes it do what it does then this book is for you.

Personally, it has changed the way that I look at many things about brain functions. I also reckon it is going to help me better understand my own brain and get more from it. In short, a really worthwhile read.

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