Jeff Hawkins claims he’s figured out how intelligence works | Hacker News Reader

Jeff Hawkins claims he’s figured out how intelligence works

technologyreview.com

31 pointsshamoo11 comments

Was there ever a huge debate on what intelligence and learning really are? It's basically the storage and retrieval of information by the brain. You either know something (or know to do something) or not, and learning is the process of storing that in your brain. It's simply knowledge, it's there or not, and there is a process to load it in there.

I think the real question is how does it really work... and I think if anyone solves this then in theory they can make the system learn ANYTHING. I don't think Jeff has accomplished this. He might have a theory of how PARTS of the brain store SOME information, but lacks details of the OVERALL process and how parts integrate, and of course the CRUCIAL participation of Consciousness in all this.

Whoever actually solves intelligence and learning, in theory could put that system to the test with anything, and immediately see huge breakthroughs in any application.

It's not just knowledge. It's also problem solving. It is part applying learned knowledge and patterns, but also making connections on the spot without having previous domain experience about it.

Intelligence contains all those aspects.

Transferring domain experience still requires previous experience in a different domain that you can transfer from. I'm just pointing out the correlation between more intelligence and more knowledge, or at least the potential of more knowledge, given the environment from which to "mine" it from.

I just think that your definition was missing the part about problem solving.

For instance in a field of medicine you need A LOT of knowledge, but in other fields such as STEM you need more ability of recognising patterns and drawing connections.

You can have plenty of things memorised, but it doesn't mean you can capitalise on that information.

See recent hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26240901

So this is different from when he figured it out in 2005?

I've had similar thoughts. I realised that learning is a constant struggle of competing models of reality formed by the conflicting elements of prediction and surprise.

Jeff Hawkins claims he’s figured out how intelligence works

Where did you pull that title from?

It's in the subheading of the article?

"Neuroscientist and tech entrepreneur Jeff Hawkins claims he’s figured out how intelligence works—and he wants every AI lab in the world to know about it."

Ok, fine. But where did that come from? Where did Jeff Hawkins make that claim?

“I think I know what intelligence is; I think I know how brains do it.”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com