On Intelligence
• Jeff Hawkins– Founder, Palm Computing: Palm Pilot– Founder, Handspring: Treo– Founder: Numenta
• Redwood Neuroscience Institute • Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience
at UCBerkley
– Published On Intelligence in 2004
One Function for All?
• Vernon Mountcastle, Johns Hopkins
• “An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Functions”, 1978– The various regions of the cortex for different
senses all look the same …– Mountcastle proposed that all cortex regions
implement the same algorithm.– Vision, hearing, sensing … all the same thing
from the perspective of neural computation
Brains vs. Computers
Brains Computers
very slow fast
highly parallel generally sequential
highly redundant generally singular
composed of layers of neurons
composed of storage and processing units
Information flows both
ways
Spatial and temporal
patterns from retinas
What you think you see.
What your eyes are actually focusing on.
Saccades and fixations
~3/second
What you think you see.
What your eyes are actually receiving.
Distortions amplify what your eyes are fixated on
Shifts in fixation do not simply shift the image
IT cells respond to specific object types in fov:i.e. a human face
V1 cells respond to specific features:i.e. a line slanted at 30degrees
When inputs don’t match predictions (at any layer), the discrepancy is quickly noticed.
Feedback signals are predictions about what we expect to happen next
Feedback signals are spread very broadly across upper layer