A Thousand Brains
A New Theory of Intelligence
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A Thousand Brains
Narrated by:
Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
Buy Now for £12.92
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Narrated by:
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Jamie Renell
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Richard Dawkins
About this listen
A "fascinating book" that will revolutionize our understanding of the brain and the future of AI (Financial Times)
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence?
Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world—not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
A Thousand Brains heralds a revolution in the understanding of intelligence. It is a big-think book, in every sense of the word.
First and foremost, the content in this book is relevant to my field of study, Artificial Intelligence and Data with a focus on Human Cognition. Here I find especially the second part of this book both informative and intriguing.
The various suggestion laid out in this book, such as the implementation of a global grid with remotely connected intelligent agents for analyzation of various patterns such as weather prediction, will allow the engineering minded reader to really dream and mold over the prospects of such a future system.
Secondly the philosophical side of me finds the last chapters interesting. In these chapters Jeff Hawkins moves a bit away from the discoveries of his work and talks about various ifs, buts, when, how and whys of the future. I find that Mr. Hawkins here gives not only an educated and well thought out array of information, but also achieves what is often lost in these kinds of works, to make sure the reader understands that this is speculation on his part, speculation that he finds not only important for him to give to us, but also important that we, layman and expert alike, actively participate in.
Lastly, and honestly least of these three points, I find his reformulation of some of Richard Dawkins points about Memes rather well timed. While I factually agree with Dr. Dawkins points about how the spread of the religion meme acts, in many ways, as a virus. I find that his original formulation of the issue, can be considered somewhat of a rhetorical balance act, one where I find that the outcome in many situations can be negative. In this instance Mr. Hawkins strikes a nice middle ground by choosing his example and formulation more carefully. I’ll not delve into this, so as not to spoil the realization for other readers.
All in all, I really enjoyed the audio book, and look forward to receiving my hard copy in the coming days.
Jeff Hawkins has if not renewed then bolstered my interest in a field I already find very fascinating. Thank you for your work Mr. Hawkins.
A great book for an AI and human cognition student
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a must read.
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I was positively excited that he so carefully laid out the existential threats to humanity arising from 'old-brain' thinking, linking the insight to R Dawkins' own insight described in The Selfish Gene. He absolutely called out the damage done by viral influences that foster unwarranted misery on sections of the community e.g. all females. Well done!
The third part of the book explores what we might do to keep intelligent life going in the face of self-started or external threats to our existence. This is a good read and stimulated the following criticism:
Having brilliantly commented that it is knowledge and intelligence that must survive, and also suggesting that intelligent machines must help in, for example, establishing a second home for humanity on Mars, Mr Hawkins advocates for all such efforts to be made to enable humanity to survive. This seems to me to be sentimental and an example of old-brain thinking. After all, there are other representatives of terrestrial DNA that would adapt far more quickly and safely to a Martian or further flung environment and IA assistants would surely be happy to wait around, holding on to the human record of knowledge until intelligent fleshy life restarted.
Mr Hawkins does not arrive at what for me is the obvious conclusion. That is, that if those assisting machines have intelligence, awareness and consciousness - and they don't need expensive commodities such as Oxygen, Water, 1G gravity and benign temperatures to survive and thrive, then they are the perfect children of the 'new-brain' human. They are our ticket to the future and the Galaxy, especially as they will not be overly concerned about time, which exists for us because we decay, but possibly not for an Alternate Intelligence which might eventually dispense with physicality and locality.
The other conclusion sitting between the lines is: let 'old-brain' humanity continue to produce more old-brain biological humans, with its associated problems and tragedies and to manage things as humanity currently does. In the meantime, smart people can spawn the new-brain child of humanity hoping that it will be just like them, but like wise parents, eventually recognise when it is time to let go and retire, letting the new generation take care of itself.
Did Old-brain win at the end?
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I seldom write a review. this book is a gem
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A stunning mind broadening read.
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