How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed

by Ray Kurzweil

A very important point to note here is that information flows down the conceptual hierarchy as well as up. If anything, this downward flow is even more significant. If, for example, we are reading from left to right and have already seen and recognized the letters “A,” “P,” “P,” and “L,” the “APPLE” recognizer will predict that it is likely to see an “E” in the next position. It will send a signal down to the “E” recognizer saying, in effect, “Please be aware that there is a high likelihood that you will see your ‘E’ pattern very soon, so be on the lookout for it.” The “E” recognizer then adjusts its threshold such that it is more likely to recognize an “E.” So if an image appears next that is vaguely like an “E,” but is perhaps smudged such that it would not have been recognized as an “E” under “normal” circumstances, the “E” recognizer may nonetheless indicate that it has indeed seen an “E,” since it was expected. The neocortex is, therefore, predicting what it expects to encounter. Envisaging the future is one of the primary reasons we have a neocortex. At the highest conceptual level, we are continually making predictions—who is going to walk through the door next, what someone is likely to say next, what we expect to see when we turn the corner, the likely results of our own actions, and so on. These predictions are constantly occurring at every level of the neocortex hierarchy. We often misrecognize people and things and words because our threshold for confirming an ...