Accelerating Future Transhumanism, AI, nanotech, the Singularity, and extinction risk.

Developer Platform from Numenta

Numenta has released their NuPIC platform for developers. Jeff Hawkins' release note starts as follows:

"To our developer partners:

Although you may be anxious to download Numenta's software and give it a try, you should read this brief note first. I will give an introduction to what this release is for and what you should expect as you use it.

Why did we create Numenta?

Numenta was formed to develop and promote a technology called Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. We are confident that the principles underlying HTM are the same principles that govern much of the operation of the human neocortex; thus, HTM enables the creation of machines that have some of the capabilities of the human brain. We see HTM as a fundamental new computing methodology able to solve longstanding problems in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Be sure to read the white paper on our web site that describes the basics of HTM and what it can do."

The white papers are here.

I read On Intelligence and thought that while Hawkins' ideas were interesting, his expository style was underwhelming. His HTM ideas simply remind me of how cortical hierarchial systems in the brain work. Because On Intelligence was a popular book, he kept inserting anecdotes about his thought process leading up to his "discovery" of the concept, and other personal references that got in the way of his explaning his theory. He kept talking about why his ideas were sure to be revolutionary and widely adopted by everyone in the future, which I found to be a turn-off.

I think it's great to build AIs inspired by the human neocortex. But I don't think that human-equivalent intelligence necessarily follows from such efforts. The brain has other components aside from the neocortex. There are probably processing subtleties necessary for implementing true intelligence that we don't yet understand. I'm not saying that we need to describe the operation of every single neuron in the brain to develop a theoretical framework for artificial intelligence that works, just that in the absence of persuasive empirical evidence, we should stop jumping to conclusions about the scalability or real-world effectiveness of a system implemented based on our model of intelligence.

I do plan to read the white paper and other material on the Numenta site, though, and will be watching closely to see what developers have to say about the NuPIC platform. The fact that there are emerging companies pursuing artificial general intelligence shows that we should take the possible consequences of their success seriously.