Review | In A Thousand Brains, Jeff Hawkins presents his theory of intelligence and what it could mean for AI
- Technologist and neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins suggests suggests the brain works on some sort of universal principle that enables it to adapt itself to any task
- He tiptoes round the edge of the pool of philosophical ideas, preferring to remain in the realm of claims that can be experimentally tested
A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
by Jeff Hawkins
Basic Books
“People often say the brain is the most complicated thing in the universe,” writes neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins. “They conclude from this that there will not be a simple explanation for how it works, or that perhaps we will never understand it.”
In A Thousand Brains his crisp explanations succeed in proving this deduction wrong.
Hawkins found universities reluctant to accept him as a PhD candidate with a project to find a satisfactory theoretical framework into which to put what was already known about the brain and thus explain consciousness and intelligence. So instead he went off to make a fortune in handheld computing, then used it to found his own neuroscience institute.
A Thousand Brains demonstrates a similar roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-on-with-it approach to research, as well as how a new understanding of intelligence has been reached and what the implications of this might be for the future of the human race.
The key is the neocortex, a thick envelope of cells wrapped around the top of what he calls the old brain and that forms about 70 per cent of the brain’s total volume. This is the location of all forms of perception, analysis and rational behaviour, and is the seat of consciousness and abstract thought such as mathematics and philosophy. Its struggle for dominance with the more basic drives originating in the old brain is an underlying theme of the book.
Hawkins builds on earlier research that showed how the neocortex had grown by making copies of the same basic circuit – the semi-autonomous cortical columns of cells that form its cross-section. Each is connected to a tiny area of the retina, or particular patch of skin, for instance.
One mystery has been how all these nearly identical circuits are processing identical electric signals from our various senses and yet managing to turn them into our perceptions of different sights and sounds, for example. Connect the same cortical region to different senses and entirely different results are obtained.