Jeff Hawkins – A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence
Summary: In this book, Hawkins presents his „Thousand Brains Theory,“ which proposes that intelligence emerges from thousands of modeling systems distributed throughout the neocortex, rather than from a single centralized processing system. He argues that each cortical column creates its own complete model of objects and concepts, and these models vote together to form our unified perception of reality. The theory builds on Hawkins‘ earlier work on hierarchical temporal memory and suggests that the brain’s fundamental mechanism is prediction-based learning through reference frames. Hawkins also explores the implications of this theory for artificial intelligence, arguing that true AI must be built on these same principles of distributed modeling and prediction. The book ultimately presents a new framework for understanding both biological intelligence and the path toward creating genuinely intelligent machines.
Why we like it: Hawkins‘ book is so exciting because it offers a fundamentally new explanation for how intelligence actually works in the brain – suggesting that thousands of independent modeling systems work together rather than intelligence being centralized, which could revolutionize our understanding of both human cognition and consciousness.