It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
I find your initial comment rather antique, for the lack of a better term. It's a fallacy and cliché to believe that you have to live unconventional, to think unconventional. Looking in to the history of ideas, rarely a thinker was conspicuous in his life. For example, I just read Sprit of the Laws by Montesquieu. Probably one a the most insightful writing in human history. A man with a very normal life of an educated man. I also don't think that Hawking's hypothesis is unconventional, the framing and metaphor probably. However, it doesn't seem that it can be verified anyways.
Thanks
Davood: Superb analysis! I agree with you 100%. Thank you for pointing out the similarity between Hawkins' Thousand Brains and Dennet's Multiple Drafts Also, your insight about the mythologizing of Vernon Mountcastle is particularly keen!
Useful Review!
I also appreciate the first part of the book, and I appreciate it very much. I have read the previous book titled 'On Intelligence' and I was impressed. I was also impressed with Jeff's theory about prediction, the reference frames and the thousand brains. His effort is to understand how the neo-cortex works and reverse engineer it. At Numentana they are doing the first steps. I am curious about it.
Modelling and prediction are not the same thing, so I think it is misleading to say that the cortical column is doing prediction. Hawkins claim is much stronger. Prediction can be done by opaque/statistical functions of inputs. Hawkins claims that the columns all build models that explains the observed feature. This provides a much richer structure - which can predict - but can also do much more. That is a key difference to other theories. His book and associated papers describe exactly how that can be done, including simulations to back it up. Compare medical science (based on clinical trials and statistics) and physics based on models. Newton and Einstein's models of physical reality are much stronger than statistical patterns of medicine. We do not know why a lot of active compounds in medicine work. We just know that they typically do. If we had a better model, we would tailor the treatment to each person much more precisely just like we can accurate calculate how much fuel is required to bring a rocket to space.
I am yet to read the book , but the style of your review is Plausible: subscribed. I would like to recommend Sankya Karika to your review list.
From Nepal
It's good...
I really appreciate the contribution of new models & reference frames in my neocortex from this book. A mother of two, a citizen of the universe, not by far a neuroscientist nor AI/machine learning person and yet I have enjoyed the book, intrigued and inspired to know more (now I can say "this is as result of the cooperation by my old and new brain"). P.S. will take the suggestion and replicate the knowledge to my 2 boys, and my family and friends. P.S.S may knowledge live long and prosper.
The neocortex is dense. A hundred thousand neurons are crammed into the space of a grain of rice, connected to each other at half a billion synapses, via several kilometers of cabling – axons and dendrites. There are many different activities going on inside different parts of the neocortex, and what differentiates them is not their structure, but their connections. When we learn something, these connections are strengthened. When we forget something, they are weakened.
I just got the book. I am impressed! As I have seen it, after Edelman, nobody has taken the approach of trying to model how the human brain is creating consciousness.
It's becoming clearer that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
The thing I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My intuitively felt advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461
I'm only grateful to Jeff, he was very inspirational since that wonderful presentation at IBM's Almaden back in 2006. I trust he'll manage to take us to real artificial intelligence. Either he or myself ;-)
very f-in excited to read this... Heck yeah
I have a question about the evolutionary and biological function of consciousness. OK, so most synapses are predictive primers for neurons, right? A synapse pattern primes the neuron to be ready to strike just a bit faster. It seems self-evident to me there must be a mechanism to prime the primer - and that this is the function of consciousness. For example, I want to cross the road ... I direct my attention to these fast-moving objects, or in other words I consciously focus my brain's reference frame ability to accurately calculate speeds and distances in this dangerous environment to determine if I can safely cross the road. All mammals do this and it is integral to our survival, for example a cat, hunting, focusing it's reference frames intently on its prey. Therefore I have a question: what is the physical mechanism to prime the primer, i.e. to direct our brain's predictive reference frames which are the synapses that themselves prime the neurons? There must be, we can literally feel it happening when we want to cross a road, or another example catching a ball. And without such an ability we could not do these things.
Having finished the book I recommend to read it in parallel with the 'Mind and the Cosmic Order
' book by Charles Pinter. If I understand it correctly Gestalt perception in Pinter's book could be paralleled with a voting of thousands of cortical columns in Jeff's theory.
I read On Intelligence too. A few times actually. And some chapters - with HTM details - many times. You could say that I studied it. At the time I was trying to build "intelligent" software using these principles. But when trying to really pin down the HTM theory in order to turn it into working software, something was missing. I wrote to Jeff as well offering to collaborate - but never got an answer. I guess he got too many emails like mine. From where I'm looking, the progress made by Numenta, at least in the early years seemed really slow. Did it improve significantly later? To be honest, I'm not qualified to judge. Now,15 years later, we get this new book. And I have to confess I have mixed feelings about getting it. Jeff is still a compelling speaker. And I'm sure the new book will be a pleasant, intriguing read. But will it be just another teaser as On Intelligence was - at more than double the price? Most likely yes, I would guess. I don't believe Jeff and the guys at Numenta (or anyone else for that matter) now really understand human intelligence. But I believe that some further steps in that direction (and some misleading ones as well) have been taken. I remain a fan of of Jeff's approach of getting to AI through human intelligence but I hope they will have the book in the city library soon enough...
What is it he's living in?? A sort of converted ex-methodist church?
So excited!
I read "On Intelligence" and found it intriguing. Looking forward to reading this new book to get updated on new research.
Obviously current AI is still rather... artificial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq36J9pNaEo
After all that seemingly high IQ talk from Sophia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq36J9pNaEo&t=538
Tony Robbins: "Can you shake my hand?"
Sophia: "Is something wrong with your hand?"
Really looking forward to this
Super excited to read. Thx!
Good one keep sharing such good books … excellent review