"A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins is a groundbreaking exploration that transcends the boundaries of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. With his unique blend of expertise as an author, neuroscientist, and computer engineer, Hawkins presents a revolutionary theory that challenges our understanding of the brain and offers profound insights into the future of AI.

In a field marked by countless advancements, Hawkins boldly addresses one of the most elusive questions in neuroscience: how do the simple cells in our brains give rise to intelligence? Drawing on his extensive research and collaborations, Hawkins and his team unveil a remarkable revelation—the brain constructs not just a single model of the world, but an intricate web of map-like structures that encompass hundreds of thousands of models representing our knowledge.

This discovery alone opens up a new frontier of understanding, enabling Hawkins to shed light on fundamental aspects of human cognition. Through his theory, he tackles the nature of perception, elucidating how our brains create internal models that allow us to make sense of the world around us. Moreover, he delves into the enigma of the self, providing thought-provoking explanations for why we possess a sense of self and the origins of high-level thinking.

What sets "A Thousand Brains" apart is Hawkins' ability to distill complex scientific concepts into accessible and engrossing prose. The book guides readers on a mind-expanding journey, equipping them with a deeper understanding of the brain's inner workings. Hawkins strikes an ideal balance between technical details and engaging storytelling, ensuring that both experts and laypeople can appreciate the significance of his findings.

Furthermore, Hawkins' work has far-reaching implications for the future of artificial intelligence. By elucidating the brain's maplike structures and computational principles, he offers a fresh perspective on developing AI systems that can truly emulate human intelligence. His insights challenge prevailing paradigms and provide a roadmap for scientists and engineers seeking to create AI that goes beyond mere data processing.

While Hawkins' theory is undoubtedly groundbreaking, it is important to note that "A Thousand Brains" presents a comprehensive yet evolving framework. As with any scientific exploration, there are still questions to be answered and further research to be conducted. However, Hawkins' audacious proposal and the evidence he presents ignite a sense of excitement and possibility, pushing the boundaries of our understanding and inviting future exploration.

In conclusion, "A Thousand Brains" is an extraordinary work that synthesizes neuroscience, AI, and cognitive science, offering a new lens through which to comprehend intelligence. Jeff Hawkins' ability to articulate complex concepts with clarity and his thought-provoking theories make this book a must-read for anyone interested in the workings of the human brain, the future of AI, and the profound mysteries of intelligence itself.

I am by no means an expert on the brain or anything, just thought it would be an interesting read.

I enjoyed the first part of the book explaining the theory.
I really liked reading about the brain, how it makes and builts connections, how intelligence is modelled and stored in the brain. It was really insightful. I found it accessible as someone with no expertise, the language, whilst scientific, was really easy to understand and it had a logical structure.
I didn't enjoy the other two parts of the book as much. It felt a bit seperate from the first part of the book, but some of the AI stuff was interesting.

Overall I found it worth the read.

I would like to thank Net Galley and the author Jeff Hawkins for giving me the opportunity to preview this advance copy.

I’ll begin by stating that I admire the author from the standpoint of his industry insight and history in the tech industry from his days at Palm Computing.

His topic in this this case offers his view on where brain research and the future of artificial Intelligence and ultimately the survival of the human species and the knowledge it develops is leading.

The content contains scientific terminology as the subject matter requires, but it is presented in an understandable, readily accessible level that is easy to follow.

The ideas the author proposes are opinionated, but he presents them in a manner of trying to open the reader to the possibilities rather than shoving them down your throat. He admits that he may not be 100% accurate in his forecasts and projections, but his history in this area is rather good so it would be inappropriate to not consider what he has to say.

The ideas and story are told in a logical progression that walks the reader through a journey of discovery and insight. It creates many thought provoking ideas. Everyone will not agree with what is said, but it will make you think.

Overall, a very good book with many thoughtful projections that will give the reader some optimism for the future.

Will post link to Amazon/Goodreads review when available

I love reading about the brain; about neuroscience, consciousness, and emotions, and there are a few books (non-fiction) I have read in this category that have absolutely changed my life. (At the top of this list is “The Brain That Changes Itself”, by Norman Doidge). And I now have another to add to this list - “A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence” by Jeff Hawkins.

While I definitely did not agree with all of the authors suggestions, and found several of them downright terrifying (particularly in Part Two and Three) this book was mind-blowing in it’s scope, opening my eyes (and my thousand brains) to a whole new way of thinking about intelligence - how it is constructed, modeled and stored in the human brain - and what this new thinking means for future machine intelligence (AI) and its potential and ultimate place in the long term survival of the human race. Heady stuff. (Pun intended!)

Written in a way that is much more accessible to the lay-person than a typical book on such subjects, the first part of the book describes a new theory on how intelligence is constructed, based on the neocortex (the wrinkled wrapper around the brain, a 2.5 mm layer that is the newest layer of the brain, evolutionally speaking). In this theory, Hawkins provides a fascinating look at neurons, the brains nerve cells, and how they are aligned along the neocortex in rows, but more importantly, as far as intelligence is concerned, in columns. These cortical columns, of which there are about 150,000, are each identically structured with general-purpose cells capable of modeling and manipulating objects or concepts, learning as they go, and using this learning to continuously form predictions. This is achieved through the use of reference frames, conceptual maps in essence, that are cross-tagged dynamically with thousands of objects as we learn and connect them to form our ongoing mental representation of reality.

Simulations of these cortical-column-based modelers can form the basis for new and evolving forms of machine intelligence, providing the much-needed impetus, Hawkins believes, to fulfill the promise of the exploding field of AI. This is explored in Part two of this astounding book in some detail, along with Hawkins thoughts on what truly intelligent machines, constructed in this way, (that is, self-learning and independent), can be used to achieve along with what risks to humankind may be involved in the wide-scale adoption of these super-robotic intelligent beings. This section is more speculative, less grounded on science and facts, and definitively more controversial, both in its content and its treatment of ethical questions. There were many areas here that made me cringe, ethically, particularly in the treatment of “consciousness”, including both what it is and what it implies. For example, - Hawkins determines there is no ethical quandary in turning off a “conscious” robot (assuming such a robot could be constructed) as they would have no feelings, (fear or survival instinct). In my mind, extending this premise to other conscious-but-not-feeling creatures leads to some pretty scary ethical decisions.

Hawkins closes with a discussion of the old-brain vs new conflict, the long term survival of the human race, human or robotic colonization of other planets, intergalactic communication, and our obligation to preserve knowledge as the legacy of the human race.

Phew.

This is a book to devour, think about, sift through the ideas, and take away some nuggets to be pulled out, again and again, to reconsider. In my case at least, a great many of those nuggets are mind-altering.

A big thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an advance review copy of this book. All thoughts presented here are my own.

The first part of the book is well built with authorbeing inspired by different classical works and the research his direction took.

You are left in amazement regardign how our brain works, remembers, recalls. How it maintains the model of our world and uses reference frames to understand everything. Lots of papers referred. The later parts are playing out future scenarios.

"The longer you work on a problem, the more constraints you discover and the harder it becomes to imagine a solution. .. The likelihood that a solution is correct increases exponentially with the number of constraints it satisfies."
The author says its like solving a crossword puzzle.

Place cells, grid cells

"Neurons take the same amount of time to search through a thousand maps as to search through one"
Locations in the neocortex

"thinking is actually moving through a space, through a reference frame"

"being an expert is mostly about finding a good reference frame to arrange facts and observations"
"Knowledge in the brain is distributed"

3.5
Only the first part of this book actually deals with the thousand brain theory, after that the author goes way off tangent, his discussions on AI is still relevant to neurology and thus the book however the entire 3rd section is about aliens and space travel and has nothing to do with the thousand brain theory.
Though the theory is interesting I feel like he didn't go nearly in-depth enough, also based on this book all the discoveries Numenta has made have been by him and him alone, at no point does he credit his colleagues/employees. He describes all the ideas being his and his alone as if the 100+ other people who work there have been twiddling their thumbs for the past few decades. The notion that he is solely responsible for all of the discoveries spoken about in this book (and that they all came to him while he sat in his office staring at a coffee cup) is frankly unrealistic and thus unbelievable.
A few specific thoughts:
We have goals that aren't based on old brain emotions though - I want to learn Chinese, I want to read this book instead of this book etc. thus AI could still have some goals, just simple short-term goals
“To support my point, consider that the largest loss of indigenous life was not directly inflicted by human invaders, but by introduced diseases—bacteria and viruses for which indigenous people had poor or no defenses” - Humans purposely spread these diseases so actually goes against his argument
“It is understandable that people believed in a flat Earth five hundred years ago, because the spherical nature of the planet was not widely understood, and there was little to no evidence that the Earth was not flat” - 500 years ago most people didn't believe the world was flat as there was plenty of evidence to prove it wasn't - the concept that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way round was what was widely believed
“fighting over territory, fighting for mating rights, forced copulation, and stealing resources. All built-in behaviors” - rape is a built in behaviour??
“Some dinosaur species evolved into today’s birds, but most went extinct” - That's still extinction, all dinosaurs went extinct. If an animal evolves far enough to be classified as a new animal and there are none of the original left that animal is extinct
“being lost forever is the same as never existing” - No it's not. Our lives aren't for future people. Our existence is not dependent on others remembering us. We are our own free thinking intelligent beings why is our knowledge of ourself not enough why does our existent only become valid if another says so
“If you look at Earth this way, then it doesn’t make sense to try to preserve species or to preserve Earth. We cannot stop the Earth’s most basic geological features from changing, and we can’t stop species from evolving and going extinct” - then why should we bother trying to stop our species from going extinct?
“Every environmentalist would be happy to see the extinction of some living things—say, the poliovirus” - The poliovirus isn't a living thing, no virus is
“I want to emphasize again that I am not prescribing what we should do. My goal is to encourage discussion” - Yet you wrote an entire book that is very biased (at no point does he provide or even entertain the thought of gene survival over knowledge survival)

I really valued the first part of the book and the exploration of the Thousand Brains Theory. It built on other widely accepted models of how the brain worked and inspired thought as to how we make new connections and build on connections we already have.
The next two parts of the book should have been a separate book. It felt irrelevant to the first part and more like a passion project of the author. They were challenging to read and shifted my opinion of the overall book.

This science book is full of wonderful information. It focuses on neuroscience specially on neocortex. It tries to come up with theory of how it works.
Its arguments and analogies appear impressive and book is written in such a simple language that everyone can read it.
It has very wide reach into realms of science. It describes brain mind integration, AI, future of mankind, effect of old brain on neocortex, consciousness and all aspects of effects of new theory.
book is higly readable and enjoyable and focuses on real situations and practical applications of neuroscience.
A great read for science lovers. .

Thanks to NetGalley and basic books for the digital copy of the book for an honest review.

The book is divided into 3 parts, and they are: Part 1: A New Understanding of the Brain; Part 2: Machine Intelligence; Part 3: Human Intelligence.
The first part was, by far, my favorite. In that section the author focus on the a thousand brains theory itself, in a simplified way, which allows people without previous knowledge on the field to understand the basics of the theory. it left me wanting a little more details about h9ow they got to some conclusions and also more about experiments that corroborate their theory. There is a suggested readings section in the end of the book to expand on some topics in case you are interested. I think it would be interesting to reread this book a some years from now to see if what he says in here holds up and stands the test of time.
The second part, which I also enjoyed quite a bit, is about AI and how the a thousand brains theory can help in that field. I particularly liked the discussion about what consciousness is and what really is an intelligent machine.
i didn't love the third part as much. It becomes highly speculative, in a non convincing way, even though it brings some interesting discussions, such as what the merger of brain and machine could mean.
If neuroscience and AI are topics that you are interested in then this is worth the read (at least the first 2 parts).

O livro é dividido em 3 partes, sendo elas (em tradução livre): Parte 1: Um Novo Entendimento do Cérebro; Parte 2: Inteligência de máquinas; Parte 3: Inteligência Humana.
A primeira parte foi, de longe, a minha preferida. Nesta parte o autor explica a sua "a thousand brains theory" (ou teoria dos mil cérebros, em tradução livre) de forma bem simplificada, o que permite que pessoas que não sejam da área científica consigam compreender. Me deixou com um gostinho de quero mais sobre alguns detalhes, pois por ser teórico não traz muitos experimentos que comprovem o que supões ser verdade, mas ao final do livro tem sugestões de leituras complementares para aprofundar um pouco nos temas abordados ao longo do livro. Seria interessante reler o livro daqui uns anos e ver se o que ele propões consegue se manter com o tempo e avanço científico.
Na segunda parte, que também gostei bastante, ele traz um pouco sobre inteligência artificial e como sua teoria pode ser aplicada neste campo. Gostei principalmente das discussões sobre o que e conciência e o que realmente é inteligência em uma máquina.
Já a terceia parte não me agradou tanto. Ele soa altamente especulativo e, embora traga algumas discussões interessantes, como a o que poderia acontecer na fusão de cérebros e máquinas, ele não conseguiu me convencer.
Se neurociência e inteligência artificial são assustos que te interessam vale a pena a leitura, pelo menos das duas primeiras partes.

A Thousand Brains is a mixed bag. The first half describes Hawkins' theory of how the neocortex works, and there's a great deal there that is appealing. As a theory, it's relatively simple and self-consistent, and it fits the available data, at least in broad strokes. The theory operates at an intermediate level of abstraction: it's higher-level than the bottom-up feature analysis of David Marr, and it's lower-level than the top-down Society of Mind of Marvin Minsky. To borrow a phrase from Silicon Valley, it's a "Middle Out" approach.

I'm actually rather offended that Hawkins' never mentions Minsky. Hawkins practically steals the language of Minsky's Society of Mind (thousand brains, reference frames, etc.), but neglects to give credit, even in the annotated bibliography (which, let's admit it, is mainly an advertisement for Hawkins' company's papers, where presumably the actual details of this theory can be found). It seems like Hawkins either has a massive chip on his shoulder or an over-inflated ego.

This is all very frustrating, because Hawkins' hand-wavy model is probably correct, and the first half of the book is a good read (albeit, very light on technical details). Unfortunately, the second half of the book is a waste of time. Hawkins switches into prognostication mode and makes a bunch of fairly obvious arguments about the implications of machine intelligence. Anyone interested in these topics should read Yuval Noah Harari -- Homo Deus is a much richer (and better written) examination of the same topics.

I recommend the first half of the book to anyone who is interested in how to understand and reproduce human-level intelligence. But save some time and skip the second half.

The premise is that neuroscience has always interested me, but I am not an expert. That said, the book is divided into three parts, and the first two (respectively the new theory of a Thousand Brains and its application to AI) seemed to me extremely interesting, scientifically founded and mandatory to continue to deepen in the appropriate places. Unfortunately in the third part the author has turned into a kind of prophet of doom with some statements that I found unclear and above all unfounded, but it is probably a problem due to my global ignorance on the subject.

La premessa d'obbligo é che le neuroscienze mi hanno sempre interessato, ma non sono un'esperta. Detto questo il libro é diviso in tre parti, e le prime due (rispettivamente la nuova teoria dei 1000 cervelli e la sua applicazione all'AI) mi sono sembrate estremamente interessanti, scientificamente fondate e obbligatoriamente da continuare ad approfondire nei luoghi appositi. Purtroppo nella terza parte l'autore si é trasformato in una specie di profeta di sventura con delle affermazioni che io ho trovato poco chiare e soprattutto poco fondate, ma appunto, é probabilmente un problema dovuto alla mia ignoranza globale sull'argomento.

THANKS NETGALLEY FOR THE PREVIEW!

Amazing Discussion Marred By Myopia In Its Final Act. This book, by the guy that created the Palm Pilot (who has since turned to study neuroscience, which he had wanted to do from the beginning apparently), describes the intriguing new theory of how the brain works that he and his team have crafted very well. Hawkins does a truly excellent job of making the advanced theoretical neuroscience he works with approachable by all, from those who have barely ever heard of the word "neuroscience" to his colleagues and competitors in the field. In discussing the neuroscience leading up to the "thousand brain" concept and in discussing how the "thousand brain" idea directly impacts computing and artificial intelligence, Hawkins is truly amazing. The perils come in the third act, when Hawkins begins to apply the theory and what he believes it could mean directly to humans. Here, he begins to sound both Transhumanist and Randian in his claims of absolute certitude that certain beliefs are false - even while actively ignoring that by the very things he is claiming, there is so much that we simply cannot know - and therefore, logically, there can be no true certitude on these claims. While it was tempting to drop the overall work another star specifically for how bad this particular section is, ultimately the sections of the book leading up to that point are so strong that I simply can't go quite that far. So read this book through Parts I and II, just be aware up front that Part III is the weakest section of the book and could easily be skipped entirely. Recommended.