Upvoted for the OI reference, which I found to be a remarkable book. I highly recommend it. But I wouldn't go so far as to say "it would seem that the algorith

Upvoted for the OI reference, which I found to be a remarkable book. I highly recommend it. But I wouldn't go so far as to say "it would seem that the algorithm of the cortex is mostly figured out": my takeaway from the book was that a lot of it was solid educated guesses and connecting of dots. E.g., the concept that the brain stores and manipulates patterns and this is the key intelligence behind all the senses, and the multiple "levels" of intelligence and how they connect to each other. I totally agree with your second para (this is another point that is present throughout in the book). Jeff Hawkins did a good job (for me) to distinguish between intelligence and "human-ness". Recreating the human cortex will still leave us far far away from creating an artificial human brain.