The Dawn of Intelligent Machines

Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm and the Treo, is finally doing something interesting with his life. He is figuring out how to build machines that he believes will truly work like the human brain. To put his theories into practice, he's once again teaming up with his longtime business partner from his Palm and Handspring days, Donna Dubinsky, to start a new company called Numenta. What will Numenta do? It will translate the way the brain works into an algorithm that can run on a new type of computer.

The problem with attempts to create artificial intelligence so far is that they equate intelligence with processing power. But the brain does not work like a computer. To create an intelligent machine, you first have to understand how the brain works. If you do that, you'll be able to create a machine with real, not artificial, intelligence -- a machine that thinks the same way you or I do.

On Monday, in the single most fascinating presentation at the PC Forum tech conference, Hawkins explained his theory of the brain. "I brought my brain," he told the audience, holding up a plastic model of a human brain. The part of the brain he is actually interested in is the neocortex, the convoluted, pink, spongelike part that's wrapped around the "reptilian" parts of the brain like the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. It's the part of the brain where intelligence resides (as opposed to the parts that, for instance, control body functions). "If I were to take your neocortex out of your head and iron it flat, it would look like this," said Hawkins, holding up a dinner napkin representing the 30 trillion cells that make up the neocortex. "In those cells and connections, you store everything you know." (Via Business 2.0)