On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines

by Jeff Hawkins

Predictability is the very definition of reality. If a region of cortex finds it can reliably and predictably move among these input patterns using a series of physical motions (such as saccades of the eyes or fondling with the fingers) and can predict them accurately as they unfold in time (such as the sounds comprising a song or a spoken word), the brain interprets these as having a causal relationship. The odds of numerous input patterns occurring in the same relation over and over again by sheer coincidence are vanishingly small. A predictable sequence of patterns must be part of a larger object that really exists. So reliable predictability is an ironclad way of knowing that different events in the world are physically tied together. Every face has eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. If the brain sees an eye, then saccades and sees another eye, then saccades and sees a mouth, it can feel certain it is seeing a face.