[extropy-chat] Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence"

[Dan Fabulich]

Has anybody seen a technical review of Jeff Hawkins' new book, "On
Intelligence"?  Anybody here feel up to providing one?  Wired had a
particularly glowing article on it, calling it a revolutionary model of
intelligence, yada yada.

The book description condenses his theory like this: "The brain is not a
computer, but a memory system that stores experiences in a way that
reflects the true structure of the world, remembering sequences of events
and their nested relationships and making predictions based on those
memories. It is this memory-prediction system that forms the basis of
intelligence, perception, creativity, and even consciousness."

This is clearly too condensed to make any sense, (Turing computers *are*
memory systems, by definition,) but I'm wondering if anybody with a more
critical eye has examined this carefully and can tell me whether it's
better than it looks.

OK, back to work.

-Dan

      -unless you love someone-
    -nothing else makes any sense-
           e.e. cummings