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>A big new part of the book is that Hawkins and collaborators now have more refined ideas about exactly what learning algorithm the neocortex is running. [...]
by arketyp 6y ago
>A big new part of the book is that Hawkins and collaborators now have more refined ideas about exactly what learning algorithm the neocortex is running. [...] I’m going to skip it.
And so did Hawkins, in large measures. Hawkins believes the cortical algorithm borrows functionality from grid cells and that objects of the world are modelled in terms of location and reference frames (albeit not necessarily restricted to 3D); this is performed all over the neocortex by the thousands of cortical units which have been observed to have a remarkably similar structure. There's a lot of similarity to Hinton's capsules idea in this, including some kind of voting system among units which Hawkins, unfortunately, is very hand-wavy about.
If you're interested in Hawkins's theory at a functional level, this book will disappoint. Two thirds is spent on fantasizing and speculation about what Hawkins believes will be AIs impact on the fate of humanity.
- musingsole 6y ago> Two thirds is spent on fantasizing and speculation about what Hawkins believes will be AIs impact on the fate of humanity. I'd say time will tell, but after tracking Numenta for 10+ years now...I'm starting to smell snakes oil. Thought provoking stuff, but he's too insistent that it has content he never provides.
- GeorgeTirebiter 6y agoI'm curious, if the year were 2011, would you be saying that all that 'deep learning' stuff of Hinton was just a load of malarkey? Because most people did. And then, 2012 happened and the world changed. This is the problem when working on Hard Problems -- you cannot predict with certainty when your work will pay off (if ever...).
- musingsole 6y agoWhen the year was 2011, I was looking into Jeff Hawkins Hierarchical Temporal Memories while other researchers looked at deep learning. One of those methods led to many successful projects and spawned many child projects and theses. The other has been ignored to make room for a new book.
- boltzmannbrain 6y agoYes, even for a general-audience neuroscience book this is sparse on details and has embarrassingly few references. That being said, Numenta has dedicated significant effort to publishing more details in the past 5-6 years: https://numenta.com/neuroscience-research/research-publications/papers/ https://numenta.com/neuroscience-research/research-publicati... Still there is much to be desired in the ways of mathematical and empirical grounding.