Brain Theory in AI – Inspiration or Direction?

I recently wrote a guest Industry Perspectives post for insideBIGDATA titled, “The Importance of Brain Theory in True Machine Intelligence.” In this piece, I was asked to explore various questions, including what is machine intelligence technology based on neocortical theory, why is it important, how and why does it work, and where will it take us?

These are obviously questions that we think about every day here at Numenta, but for many people, a biological approach to machine intelligence is a new concept. I was reminded of this at a social event recently, where I engaged in the typical, “What do you do?” banter. When I began to talk about Numenta and our goal of figuring out how the brain learns, I was immediately interrupted with questions: Are you building a brain? (No.) Building a robot based on the brain? (No.) Aren’t you afraid smart machines will take over the world? (No.)

Once the typical questions ended, the conversation shifted to brains and brain theory. It was with this conversation in mind that I wrote the piece and posed this question:

In the field of artificial intelligence, should the brain serve as inspiration or roadmap?

How would you answer this question? To see my thoughts on it, you can read the full article here.

Authors
Christy Maver • Director of Marketing
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