Jeff Hawkins hacks the human brain

"The creator of the PalmPilot and the Treo isn't just making another gadget. He's attempting to fuse silicon and gray matter to produce the ultimate intelligent machine."

Here’s an interesting article I read today. From what I know, I agree that Numata seems quite aggressive. The human brain has many different regions which all work together in a myriad of ways. The neocortex is agreeably a very complex portion. I can’t help but wonder if simulating just this one region, they’re going to be missing a variety of important subparts of the brain that are integral to the functioning of the neocortex. I like the passion and the efforts and I can see that there are real applications for their efforts. Whether or not it’s doing what the neocortex is doing, their product sounds like a flexible and relatively easy way to program genetic algorithms. This is weak AI – even though the article kind of hints towards it becoming strong AI. It looks like a way to expand weak AI’s reach into new territory, so it sounds great to me! Pretty cool to see such a successful group of people putting real time, money and energy into such a product!