Jeff Hawkins will present the Hitchcock lectures on October 2 and October 3, 2012. The second lecture, titled “Intelligence and Machines: Creating Intelligent Machines by Modeling the Brain,” is free and open to the public. No tickets are required.
Jeff Hawkins has a multifaceted career as an inventor, engineer, neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur. In
(2005), he describes his life as “animated by two passions”: mobile computing, and neuroscience. As the founder of Palm and Handspring, Hawkins was at the forefront of mobile computing and developed landmark products like the Palm Pilot and Treo smart phone. His lifelong interest in neuroscience led him to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in integrative biology, and to found the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, aimed at understanding how the neocortex processes information. In 2005, Hawkins gifted the RNI to UC Berkeley, where it is now the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.
Are intelligent machines possible? If they are, what will they be like? In this talk, Jeff Hawkins frames these questions by reviewing some of the efforts to build intelligent machines. He posits that machine intelligence is only possible by first understanding how the brain works and then building systems that work on the same principles. He describes Numenta’s work using neocortical models to understand the torrent of machine-generated data being created today. He will conclude with predictions on how machine intelligence will unfold in the near and long term future and why creating intelligent machines is important for humanity.