For two years now I have been reading books linked with the topic of Artificial Intelligence(AI) which are covering a wide variety of fields from neuroscience to philosophy to computer algorithms. The recent progress in the field of AI is much inspired from human brain design. Having said that, we are not even close to making a fair comparison between human brains and the state of the art artificial neural networks. Just looking at the dimension of energy consumption, the human brain runs on around 20 W and compared to the state of the art artificial neural network this biological machinery is a thousand orders larger but a million orders more energy efficient.
How is this wetware working is a question which has baffled neuroscientists and this is where the work of Jeff Hawkins to me comes as very refreshing. The book presents a new theory of intelligence, which is that there is not one brain (like one mega chip of computing) in our head but thousands of computational units which are plastic in nature adapting to functions and work in tandem trying to build consensus. The author also shares interesting research over the years from the field and how our understanding is evolving about the brain. The cherry on the cake is towards the last part of the book where the author is contemplating the future of our race and developments that we may see in times to come.
It gave me goosebumps going through the ideas presented and I wonder if this book or Mr Hawkins inspired Elon Musk to start a company like Neuralink. If you are looking for something refreshing in the fast evolving field of AI, then this book is for you.
” Reviewed by Sachin Gaur, Executive Editor, InnoHEALTH Magazine.”
