Intelligence and Machines: Creating Intelligent Machines by Modeling the Brain with Jeff Hawkins

Here is another video lecture from Jeff Hawkins on the creation of intelligent machines through the modeling of the human brain. This lecture comes via UCTV and was delivered at UC Berkeley.

Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring. He has since turned to work on neuroscience full-time, founded the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience in 2002. He is the author of On Intelligence, with Sandra Blakeslee (a science ghost-writer that she gets her name on the cover, too).

For the record, and for the Nth time, we will never model the human brain in any real sense unless we can also model the human body in which that brain resides. Personality, identity, and consciousness are not confined to the brain, we are embodied creatures embedded in biopsychosocial environments. We can't even understand the body (or the brain for that matter), so there is little chance we will model it anytime soon.

Granted, this does not preclude creating intelligent machines, but they will be intelligent in a far different way that we are - and that might not be for the best.


Intelligence and Machines: Creating Intelligent Machines by Modeling the Brain with Jeff Hawkins

Are intelligent machines possible? If they are, what will they be like? Jeff Hawkins, an inventor, engineer, neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur, frames these questions by reviewing some of the efforts to build intelligent machines. He posits that machine intelligence is only possible by first understanding how the brain works and then building systems that work on the same principles. He describes Numenta's work using neocortical models to understand the torrent of machine-generated data being created today. He will conclude with predictions on how machine intelligence will unfold in the near and long term future and why creating intelligent machines is important for humanity. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Council Lectures" [12/2012]